Was there a famous Murphy with horrific luck or is there some other reason?
2006-09-04 21:46:51 · 9 answers · asked by Anonymous in Education & Reference ➔ Words & Wordplay
His name was Major Edward A. Murphy, Jr., a a development engineer at Edwards Air Force Base.
2006-09-04 21:53:19 · answer #1 · answered by teiceejs 1 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Murphy'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.
Murphy's Law or Sod's Law?
While the name of Murphy's laws is a pleasant one as is the story of how it came to light, but the original name for 'if anything can go wrong it will' was sod's law because it would happen to any poor sod who needed such a catastrophic event the least. It also removes the ability to say "I coined this phrase!" because sod's law has been around long before any living man and has existed in many forms for hundreds of years.
One important fact about Murphy's Law was that it was not actually coined by Murphy, but by another man of the same name.
2006-09-05 05:13:16 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Major Edward A Murphy Jr. 1948 Edwards Air force base
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy's_law
2006-09-05 05:59:31 · answer #3 · answered by Eric C 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
murphy''s law is a statistical description of the possibilities of error occuring upon a specific event ,procedure decribes it as the possibility of error is always greater than the minimum possibility of perfect success in an experiment,perfect success or perfect failure is impossible because perfection is an irrational expression or that in probability the area for one element can never be greater than the whole equation it's value is determined by it's place within the system, the possibility for error is proportional to the lowest possibility of an error occurring or that an incident will occur when a proportional lack of resistance is present or a force or event has charecteristic harmful to the operation of an other system,,,,, see john nash's theory on equilibrium
2006-09-05 14:24:16 · answer #4 · answered by Book of Changes 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
His name is Murphy!
2006-09-05 04:48:21 · answer #5 · answered by Gypsie 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
His name is Murphy and when he is undercover he decides how to play the game and has a law of his own.
2006-09-05 05:19:53 · answer #6 · answered by szekeres101 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Murphy invented it !
2006-09-05 04:50:17 · answer #7 · answered by Bob 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
his names is murphy!! and he RULES!!
2006-09-05 04:54:36 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
his name was Murphy...............
2006-09-05 04:48:19 · answer #9 · answered by scottietiger 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋