Murphy Law

Murphy’s Law – Captain Edward A. Murphy

Murphy’s Law - `If anything can go wrong, it will’, originated at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949 at North Base and was named after Captain Edward A. Murphy who was an engineer on Air Force Project MC981 which was a project designed to see the extent of sudden deceleration a person can withstand in a crash.

Once after finding a transducer wired wrong, he cursed the technician responsible for it and stated `if there was any way to do it wrong, he would find it’. The contractor’s project manager keeping a list of laws added one which he called `Murphy’s Law’. What he had done was in fact that he took up an old law which had been prevailing for years in a more basic form and gave it a name.

Thereafter, Dr John Paul Stapp, the Air Force doctor who rode a sled on deceleration track to a stop, pulled Gs and gave a press conference stating that their good safety record on the project was the outcome of a firm belief in Murphy’s Law which in a necessity,needs to be considered and tried to overcome it.

Tendency to Exist on Negative & Overlook Positive

George E. Nichols, the Northrop project manager, also added a few lines of his own and Nichols’ Fourth Law states, `avoid any action with an unacceptable outcome’. He is still around at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, a quality control manager for the Viking project sending unmanned spacecraft to Mars.

Dr Stapp had a paradox – Stapp’s Ironical Paradox which states, ` the universal aptitude for ineptitude makes human accomplishment, an incredible miracle’.Some of the aerospace manufacturers adopted the Murphy’s Law and used it extensively in their ads thereafter during the next few months and very soon began quoting in several news as well as magazines and thus the Murphy’s Law originated.

Murphy’s Law draws out our tendency to exist on the negative and overlook the positive and seems to focus in being hotheads using the rules of probability, which is the mathematical likeliness that something may occur and the law captivates our imagination. Many bands have been named after Murphy’s Law as well as a popular name for Irish pubs and taverns across the globe. Moreover, it has also been used as the title for an action movie.

Why Everything You Know About Murphy’s Law is Wrong? 

A book`History of Murphy’s Law by Nick T, Spark with different recollections later on from various participants, made it difficult to pinpoint who first coined the saying Murphy’s Law and the name probably stemmed from the use of new measurement devices which were developed by Edward Murphy.

The phrase was also termed in adverse reaction to something he had said when his devices had failed in performing and was cast in its present form before the press conference later on. The long running interpersonal conflicts went unreported till Spark researched the matter and his book expands on documents on an original four part article which was published in 2003, AIR – Annuals of Improbable Research on the controversy – Why Everything You Know About Murphy’s Law is Wrong’.