Murphy of 'Murphy's Law'

[LongTomH]

Years ago, I ran into a person who claimed to have met the famed Murphy - you know, the guy who coined 'Murphy's Law.' It's usually quoted as: "If something can go wrong, it will." According to this gent, Murphy was an Air Force captain at Edwards AFB back in the day, and the original wording was: "If there is a wrong way to do something, someone will find it!"

It turns out his story was essentially correct. There's an interesting article on the Improbable Research website; the same people who also award the annual Ig-Nobel Prize for Dubious Achievement in Science. The 2003 Ig-Nobel Prize for Engineering was jointly awarded to aerospace physician Col. John Paul Stapp, engineer Capt. Edward A. Murphy and George Nichols for giving birth to Murphy's Law in 1949. The original wording as: ""If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, someone will do it."

Writer Nick T. Spark claims:

I have become the world’s leading expert on Murphy’s Law. No really, I’m serious. You doubtless have heard the Law: Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. To some it is a profound statement of philosophy, a reminder that life can be defined just as much by its inherent challenges as anything else. To others however the Law is a pessimistic comment that underscores, albeit in more elegant terms, that shit happens.

Capt.Murphy worked with Col. Stapp on a series of rocket sled tests in the late '40s and early '50s. During the tests, Col. Stapp would be blasted down the dry lake bed on a rocket sled nicknamed the 'Gee Whiz.' The tests started with a humanoid dummy nicknamed 'Oscar Eightball' - a direct ancestor of the much-abused 'Buster' of Mythbusters fame. When he had learned as much as possible from the dummy runs, Col. Stapp used himself as a human guinea pig in the subsequent runs, refusing to let another person take a risk he wasn't willing to take himself. Col. Stapp endured up to 46.2 G's (46.2 times the force of Earth's gravity!), often breaking ribs or suffering concussions.

Where does Murphy's Law come in? Well, it seems Murphy's first contributions to Stapp's tests was a series of sensors to be attached to Stapp's safety restraints to measure the G-forces pulling Stapp's body when the sled was braked. In early tests, they didn't register any force at all despite the sled's speed. As it turned out, the sensors had been wired backward, the only way they could not show any force at all. Furthermore, there were a total of four sensors and all four had been wired backwards! This is reputedly when Murphy's Law was first stated.

Col. Stapp actually used the phrase in a 1949 press conterence. A reporter asked: “How is it that no one has been severely injured — or worse — during your tests?” Stapp replied: "we do all of our work in consideration of Murphy’s Law." He further elaborated that his team thought through all possibilities for something to go wrong before doing a test. (Direct quotes are from Nick Spark's article.

Col. Stapp's test results contributed to saving the lives of jet pilots and astronauts; a lesser known achievement is Dr. Stapp's work with auto seat belts. Stapp had shown that pilots could survive many times the force of gravity if they were properly restrained. He was also made aware that Edwards was losing more pilots in car crashes than jet crashes; there was a horrendous loss of life on highways at this time. Stapp invited auto safety experts from industry and academia to view his rocket sled experiments and even staged a series of 'crash test dummy' tests at Edwards.

Col. Stapp didn't invent the now standard, three-point auto safety harness; but, he did contribute to testing and perfecting it. When Lyndon Johnson signed the 1966 law mandating seat belts and shoulder harnesses be standard equipment on all new automobiles, Stapp was present.

Quoting again from Nick Sparks' article:

“He saved a lot of lives,” says Kilanowski brightly. “In 1940 there were 25 million licensed drivers and 40,000 traffic deaths, and in they year 2000 there were 72 million drivers and 42,000 deaths. And I think that sums up his life. I can’t imagine how many millions of lives that man’s research saved over the years… He was a wonderful human being and a citizen of the world.”

[opihimoimoi]

1. I often refer to Murphy & Murphy, A Law Firm......Lotsa Peeps get it...

[Fumesucker]

2. Meh, Murphy was an optimist..

I've seen lots of times when absolutely nothing could go wrong and it did any way.

[PDJane]

3. That's murphy's wife's law........eom

[PDJane]

4. I knew the story......

but the version of Murphy's law that I was given as the original is:

"If there are two or more ways of doing something, some fool will pick the way that will cause a complete catastrophe."

[Buck Laser]

5. I was closer to the origin of the Murphy's Law than I thought.

I heard it first in 1953 when I was a young soldier learning electronics to be a guided missile technician. My instructors were all civilians, veterans of the White Sands Missile Range a few miles up the road from El Paso. One of my teachers described Murphy's Law in its simplest form, which is whatever can go wrong will. He claimed to know Murphy and referred to the rocket sled tests with Colonel Stapp. My recollection was that the sled tests took place at White Sands, not at Edwards AFB, but that could just be faulty memory.