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***


"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."


This adage is popularly known as Murphy's Law. When I had the idea of speaking on this topic (after a particularly bad day at work), I expected to have to 'invent' Murphy. The name has such an every-man quality about it, that I was certain Murphy was apocryphal and that I'd have to conjure up tales of an exceptionally unfortunate Irishman. Image my surprise when I found out that, yes, Virginia*, there really was a Murphy.

Of course, being Murphy, he didn't get the credit right away. And in fact, considering that a number of other people came to the same conclusion---albeit less succinctly---it's a wonder he got credit at all.

For instance, an Ohio newspaper published a short verse in 1841:
I never had a slice of bread,
Particularly large and wide,
That did not fall upon the floor,
And always on the buttered side.

A version very similar to Murphy is attributed to engineer Alfred Holt in 1877 :
"It is found that anything that can go wrong generally does go wrong sooner or later. Sufficient stress can hardly be laid on the advantages of simplicity. The human factor cannot be safely neglected in planning machinery."

The British stage magician Nevil Maskelyne pretty much nailed it in 1908:
"It is an experience common to all men to find that, on any special occasion, such as the production of a magical effect for the first time in public, everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Whether we must attribute this to the malignity of matter or to the total depravity of inanimate things, whether the exciting cause is hurry, worry, or what not, the fact remains."

So who the heck was Murphy, and how did he get credit for it?

Edward Aloysius Murphy, Jr. was an American aerospace engineer who worked on safety-critical systems and is best-known for the eponymous Murphy's Law, which states that "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

Born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1918, Murphy was the eldest of five children. After attending high school in New Jersey, he went to the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1940. The same year he accepted a commission into the United States Army, and undertook pilot training with the United States Army Air Corps in 1941. During World War II he served in the Pacific Theatre in India, China and Burma (now known as Myanmar), achieving the rank of major.

Following the end of hostilities, in 1947 Murphy attended the United States Air Force Institute of Technology, becoming R&D Officer at the Wright Air Development Center of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It was while here that he became involved in USAF project MX981, a series of high-speed rocket sled experiments which led to the coining of Murphy's Law in 1949.

One day, after finding that a transducer in a sensor that was supposed to measure G-forces was wired wrong, he cursed the technician responsible and said, "If there is any way to do it wrong, he'll find it."

The contractor's project manager kept a list of "laws" and added this one, which he called Murphy's Law.

Shortly after that, Air Force doctor Dr. John Paul Stapp rode a sled on the deceleration track to a stop, pulling 40 Gs, and gave a press conference. He said that their good safety record on the project was due to a firm belief in Murphy's Law and in the necessity to try and circumvent it.

Aerospace manufacturers picked it up and used it widely in their ads during the next few months, and soon it was being quoted in many news and magazine articles. Murphy's Law was born. Murphy himself was reportedly unhappy with the commonplace interpretation of his law, which is seen as capturing the essential "cussedness" of inanimate objects. Murphy regarded the law as crystallizing a key principle of defensive design, in which one should always assume worst-case scenarios.

In 1952, having resigned from the United States Air Force, Murphy carried out a series of rocket acceleration tests at Holloman Air Force Base, then returned to California to pursue a career in aircraft cockpit design for a series of private contractors. He worked on crew escape systems for some of the most famous experimental aircraft of the 20th century, including the F-4 Phantom II, the XB-70 Valkyrie, the SR-71 Blackbird, the B-1 Lancer, and the X-15 rocket plane. During the 1960s, he worked on safety and life support systems for Project Apollo, and ended his career with work on pilot safety and computerized operation systems on the Apache helicopter.

He died in 1990.


My apologies to the late Mr. Murphy, who was said by his son to have regarded the many jocular versions of the law as "ridiculous, trivial and erroneous." His attempts to have the law taken more seriously were unsuccessful.

I've found a lot of related proverbs, one of which I came up with myself. Fluffy's Law states that keys will sink to the bottom of a pocket or purse in a direct relationship to the urgency with which they are needed.**

To cite a few other Murphy-esque aphorisms,


If the possibility exists of several things going wrong, the one that will go wrong is the one that will do the most damage.

Everything will go wrong at some time.

That time is always when you least expect it.

If nothing can go wrong, something will.

Nothing is as easy as it looks.

Everything takes longer than you think.

There's never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.

Left to themselves, things always go from bad to worse.

The probability of a given event is inversely proportional to its desirability.

Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.

Variables won't, constants aren't.

Given the most inappropriate time for something to go wrong, that's when it will occur.

In any given miscalculation, the fault will never be placed if more than one person is involved.

The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone he can blame it on.

For any given discovery, the credit will never be properly placed if more than one person is involved.

All warranty and guarantee clauses become invalid upon payment of the final invoice.

If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.

Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to make it complex and wonderful.

As soon as you make something idiot-proof, along comes another idiot.

Never (never) precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive than 'Hey, y’all, watch this!'" ***

A thousand-dollar componant protected by a fast-acting 10-cent fuse will protect the fuse by blowing first.

The device requiring service or adjustment will be least accessible.

Given any problem containing N equations, there will be N+1 unknowns.

If A = B and B = C, then A = C except where void or prohibited by law.

The moment you think it's x, it changes to not x.

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

If, of the seven hours you spend at work, six hours and fifty-five minutes are spent working at your desk, and the rest of the time you sling the bull with your cubicle-mate, the time at which your supervisor will walk in and ask what you're doing can be determined to within five minutes.

If it doesn't fit, use a bigger hammer.

When all else fails, read the directions.

It works better if you plug it in.

In any human endeavor, once you have exhausted all possibilities and failed, there will be one solution, simple, obvious, and highly visible to everyone else.

And finally,

If it can be shown that something that could have gone wrong did not go wrong, then subsequent events will prove that everything would ultimately have turned out better if that thing had gone wrong.

Thank you!


+++++++++++++

* There is a Virginia in our congregation. I looked right at her when I delivered that line and it was good for the first laugh of the morning.

** Coined in 1986.

*** This one had them rolling, as it is commonly known in these parts as A Redneck’s Last Words.


***

(no subject)

Date: 2009-06-08 02:20 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com
I really like Fluffy's Law! And the urgency at which the keys are needed means they'll sink into previously hidden recesses in the bottom of that hand bag. :)

Good job!

(no subject)

Date: 2009-06-08 02:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vanillafluffy.livejournal.com
Or they'll disappear into an empty pocket, or catch on a thread and end up unraveling the whole thing or mysteriously migrate into another pocket that you know do couldn't possibly have put them into. Uh-huh. And always when it's raining, the phone is ringing on the other side of the door, you have to pee RIGHT NOW...then it's, keys? What keys...?

Thanks. When I take the floor, it usually turns into something like stand-up comedy, but I figure that's ONE way of making a joyful noise!

(no subject)

Date: 2009-06-08 06:10 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jdsgirlbev.livejournal.com
If you substitute eye glasses for keys, I can tell you, that Fluffy's Law is in full and active flower in our house!

(no subject)

Date: 2009-06-08 06:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vanillafluffy.livejournal.com
Damn, I knew I left one out! "As soon as you replace a lost item, you'll find the missing one." Ala my recent schmoopy RPF (http://vanillafluffy.livejournal.com/467223.html).

(no subject)

Date: 2009-06-08 04:08 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com
If I may add a TV tropes-like corollary, If a character in a movie or TV show ever says, "Nothing can go wrong", something will immediately go wrong.

(did you hear about the confused redneck? he beat up his cousin and had sex with his wife)

(no subject)

Date: 2009-06-08 11:20 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vanillafluffy.livejournal.com
Around here, the lottery is called the Redneck 401K.

(no subject)

Date: 2009-06-10 03:38 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] louisiane-fille.livejournal.com
I really enjoyed this! Thanks for the awesome explanation of where "Murphy's Law" comes from.

(no subject)

Date: 2009-06-10 03:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vanillafluffy.livejournal.com
The fun part has been getting more Murphyisms from friends, as with the one who sent "There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution." I'm remembering a tongue-in-cheek story I read, where the guy was talking about making home repairs with duct tape....

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