milliLampson

/mil'*-lamp"sn/ A unit of talking speed, abbreviated mL. Most

people run about 200 milliLampsons. The eponymous Butler

Lampson (a CS theorist and systems implementor highly regarded

among hackers) goes at 1000. A few people speak faster. This

unit is sometimes used to compare the (sometimes widely

disparate) rates at which people can generate ideas and

actually emit them in speech. For example, noted computer

architect C. Gordon Bell (designer of the PDP-11) is said,

with some awe, to think at about 1200 mL but only talk at

about 300; he is frequently reduced to fragments of sentences

as his mouth tries to keep up with his speeding brain.

[Jargon File]