23 Dec 2003, 10:10, Jasen Betts (3:640/1042), wrote to Pascal Schmidt:

Hi Jasen.

 PS>> [TANSTAAFL]
 RJT>>> Actually I think the expression was around long before that,
 RJT>>> though it does indeed appear in that book...

 JB> :TANSTAAFL: /tan'stah-fl/ [acronym, from Robert Heinlein's classic SF
 JB> novel "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".] "There Ain't
No Such Thing As 
 JB> A Free Lunch", 
...........................

 JB> Outside hacker circles the variant TINSTAAFL ("There is No Such
 JB> Thing...") is apparently more common, and can be traced back to 1952 
 JB> in the writings of ethicist Alvin Hansen. TANSTAAFL may well have 
 JB> arisen from it by mutation.

That second definition is closer to the time frame I remember, and the use
of the "is" in place of the "ain't" is also getting
close, as my parents didn't allow the use of "ain't", but still
not old enough.  My Dad used the TINSTAAFL (spoken out in longhand - we
didn't have acronyms for everything back then) during WWII.

The story I heard from an old uncle was that many of the "lunch
rooms" near the WWII shipyards gave free lunches to the first 50
workers to get there at lunch time.  This was due to widespread rumors from
the 'Great Depression' days, that the stews and soups the lunch rooms
served were made from rats, dogs, and cats caught in the neighborhood, and
no workers would go to eat at an 'empty lunchroom'.  

Any lunch room that had a crowd eating gave the 'appearance of being a good
place to eat', and attracted most of the shipyard workers.

I can only surmise that those who ate for free probably didn't ask many
questions about the quality or source of the food since it was for 'free',
and the 'pay' might have been their good health.

As Roy stated later, I also believe that saying came from at least as far
back as the depression days, if not much earlier.  Pure semantics as to
when the "is not" was replaced with the "ain't".


     Good luck...  M.

--- Msged/386 TE 06 (pre)