> The tin-foil hat can be traced back to 1927, first spotted by Business Insider roughly a decade ago, in a short story titled “The Tissue-Culture King.” It’s a

> The tin-foil hat can be traced back to 1927, first spotted by Business Insider roughly a decade ago, in a short story titled “The Tissue-Culture King.” It’s a strange short story written by Julian Huxley, whose brother Alduous was a prolific writer and author of Brave New World. It was Julian, however, who was possibly the first to mention wrapping your cranium in foil. I absolutely guarantee that this isn't the origin of the term "tinfoil hat" or of people accusing people that they want to discount as "wearing a tinfoil hat." What happened was a writer came across an early mention in fiction of somebody using a metal shield to fend off mind control rays that no one read and that inspired no one, and they thought they might be able to build an article around it. Using a metal shield to fend off a charge is obvious, although when it comes to a Faraday cage around your head, your neck is a problem. "Tinfoil hat" is an accusation. Find the first person recorded accusing someone else of wearing a tinfoil hat. Find out of the reference confused people, or if it seemed familiar to people. If it confused people, try to find whether he/she was asked to explain it. If it was familiar to people, look for other contemporaneous mentions and try again.