Pipe dreams are an allusion to the dreams experienced by the popular pastime of smoking opium pipes in the 18th and 19th centuries. The practice has been widely written about and cited as “inspiration” for many great works of literature.

Famous alleged exponents of the pastime include Lewis Carroll, evidence of which is clear in his series of books about Alice in Wonderland. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was another who crafted the surreal, “Kubla khan”. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has his hero Sherlock Holmes visit an opium den - although that was for research rather than consumption.

The phrase “Pipe Dreams” though doesn’t originate from any of these sources, but rather from the Chicago area of the United States. One source has an article from “The Chicago Daily Tribune” (1890) with reads, "It [aerial navigation] has been regarded as a pipe-dream for a good many years."