timelets

My lord was pleased to represent me as a great admirer of projects, and a person of much curiosity and easy belief; which, indeed, was not without truth; for I had myself been a sort of projector in my younger days.
....

I was received very kindly by the warden, and went for many days to the academy. Every room has in it one or more projectors; and I believe I could not be in fewer than five hundred rooms.

--- Gulliver's Travels, by Jonathan Swift. 1726.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/829/829-h/829-h.htm
Part 3, Chapters 4-5.