# Melbourne or Batmania

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/melbourne-or-batmania/964989
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [May 24, 2022, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/melbourne-or-batmania/964989 "2022-05-24T10:03:21Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 28

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### Author: ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2022, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/melbourne-or-batmania/964989/28 "2022-05-26T18:27:55Z")

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In the December 1954 issue of Batman (#88), there’s a story written by Edmond Hamilton “The Mystery of the Four Batmen”, where the criminal is one of the “Batmen” on board a ship – a baseball player, achiropterologist (study of the flying mammals), and a pottery expert ( because of the “bats” used on pottery wheels), but it turns out that there’s a fourth “Batman”.

It turns out that “batman” is a unit of weight used in the Ottoman Empire (about 7 pounds 5 ounces). This undoubtedly came from Hamilton’s vast file of odd facts.

I didn’t learn until years later that “batman” means the servant of a commissioned officer in the British army. Neither, apparently, did Hamilton know it. (In one much later story, Alfred describes himself as “:Batman’s ‘batman’”)

[Batman (unit) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_(unit)#:~:text=In%20the%20central%20Ottoman%20system,oz%20avoirdupois%20(7.484%20kg)).

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