where does "murphy's law" come from? who was murphy?

Answer 1

urphy's Law ("If anything can go wrong, it will") was born at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949 at North Base.

It was named after Capt. Edward A. Murphy, an engineer working on Air Force Project MX981, (a project) designed to see how much sudden deceleration a person can stand in a crash.

One day, after finding that a transducer 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.

Answer 2

It was named after Capt. Edward A. Murphy, an engineer working on Air Force Project MX981, (a project) designed to see how much sudden deceleration a person can stand in a crash.

Answer 3

Actually the phrase was first uttered at the Edwards Air Force Base in 1949 by Col. Edward Murphy who was mad at one technician who was a clutz---originally what Col Murphy said was ---"If there is a way to -----it up, he'll find it"

Answer 4

Murpy's Law is but a corollary to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, the irreversible plunge toward equilibrium and disorder. Events are not only predicted to go wrong at the worst possible moments, but they are mandated to do so by the all inclusive 2nd Law.

Answer 5

Murphy was the smartest man to ever live...

Answer 6

"Murphy's law (distinct from, and often confused with Finagle's law or Sod's law) is a popular adage in Western culture, which broadly states that things will go wrong in any given situation in which error is possible. "If there's more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then somebody will do it that way." It is most commonly formulated as "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." Technically speaking, this latter definition is incorrect, given that it refers more accurately to the law of pessimism, Finagle's Law. In American culture the law was named after Major Edward A. Murphy, Jr., a development engineer working for a brief time on rocket sled experiments done by the United States Air Force in 1949."

"Regardless of the exact composition and origin of the phrase, its spirit embodies the principle of defensive design — anticipating the mistakes the end-user is likely to make. Murphy's g-force sensors failed because there existed two different ways to connect them; one way would result in correct readings, while the other would result in no readings at all. The end-user — Murphy's assistant, in the historical account — had a choice to make when connecting the wires. When the wrong choice was made, the sensors did not do their job properly. Thus, defensive design is sometimes referred to as "Murphy proofing" a procedure.

In most well-designed technology intended for use by the average consumer, incorrect connections are made difficult. For example, the 3.5-inch floppy disk used in many personal computers will not easily fit into the drive unless it is oriented correctly. In contrast, the older 5.25-inch floppy disk could be inserted in a variety of orientations that might damage the disk or drive. The newer CD-ROM and DVD technologies permit one incorrect orientation — the disc may be inserted upside-down. A defensive designer knows that if it is possible for the disc to be inserted the wrong way, someone will eventually try it. Fatalists observe that even if it theoretically is not possible to perform something incorrectly, someone will eventually manage it or, as Silvermoon's law puts it: Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

From its initial public announcement, Murphy's law quickly spread to various technical cultures connected to aerospace engineering. Before long, variants had passed into the popular imagination, changing as they went. Generally, the spirit of Murphy's law captures the common tendency to emphasize the negative things that occur in everyday life; in this sense, the law is typically formulated as some variant of "If anything can go wrong, it will," a variant often known as "Finagle's law" or "Sod's law" (chiefly British). Laws such as Murphy's are a direct expression of such seeming perversities in the order of the universe.

Additional mutations of the law and its corollaries have developed, many of them meta-laws in some way, either through some form of self-reference or referral to other laws or analogies. For instance, the buttered-bread analogy could be further extended: "The chance of a dropped slice of bread landing buttered-side down on a new carpet is proportional to the price of the carpet." (If the buttered side falls facing up, then obviously the wrong side is buttered.) A further example is Murphy's Ultimate Corollary: "If it could have gone wrong earlier and it did not, it ultimately would have been beneficial for it to have." John Gall's systemantics offers further expansion of Murphy's law.

"Laws" can occasionally be found to lead to a paradox, or which have positive outcomes; for example: when a cat is dropped from above a certain height, it will always land on its feet. In almost a canonical example of the hackish love for wordplay and cultural in-jokes, it has been noted that, therefore, if you strap a piece of buttered toast to the back of a cat, butter side up, and drop the cat out a window, it will fall to approximately a foot above the street, and hover there, spinning.

Some state that Murphy's law cannot operate as a subset of something useful; for example: "It will start raining as soon as I start washing my car, except when I wash the car for the purpose of causing rain." O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's law is: "Murphy was an optimist!" These mutant versions demonstrate Murphy's law acting on itself, or perhaps Finagle's law acting on Murphy's law.

Author Arthur Bloch has compiled a number of books full of corollaries to Murphy's law and variations thereof. These include the original Murphy's Law (1977) and Murphy's Law Book Two (1980), which are very general in scope, and the domain-specific volumes, Murphy's Law: Doctors: Malpractice Makes Perfect and Murphy's Law: Lawyers: Wronging the Rights in the Legal Profession!.

Murphy's Law is sometimes also presented as a life philosophy. Also embodying defensive design, many simply see it as a way of saying in the approach of anything whatsoever that could have a possible flaw (be it an engineering project, a romantic relationship, an argumentative case, carrying an upright bass down a flight of stairs, or putting on your suit), then it's always within good measure to make the necessary precautions to make sure that those flaws can't happen. Many see it as the initial meaning behind what Murphy was saying, a simple philosophy of defensive design that has been highly misinterpreted. However, this is left open to controversy."

Answer 7

that doesen't tell us who Murphy is. Who was he?

now I know. That last answer came in after I submitted mine. Good answer!!!

Answer 8

It refers to a euphemism:

"Anything that can go wrong, will."