"Murphy's Law"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

Web search results:

The Edwards AFB story in question (from 1978):
http://afftc.edwards.af.mil/history/docs_html/tidbits/murphy's_law.html

The 1997 letter to "Scientific American" from Edward A. Murphy III (who
apparently believes the story about his father Edward A. Murphy, Jr.):
http://www.sciam.com/0897issue/0897letters.html

Other assertions regarding the origin of "Murphy's Law":

Apparently serious:

http://www.df.lth.se/~glue/MurphysLaw.html and
http://krugor.multimania.com/Murphya.htm state: "Murphy's Law was first
cast by Joe Chase, Editor of the Flight Safety Foundation's mechanics
Bulletin in early 1955."

http://www.user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~sbet1/murphy.html gives the
never-provably-wrong-but-always-useless perennial favorite: "Ursprung
unbekannt" ("Origin unknown").

http://membres.tripod.fr/ob/murphye.htm states [sic]: "Murphy is, or rather
was, a naval american officer, during the second world war."

Apparently jocular:

http://www.laughnet.net/archive/misc/murphyex.htm states: "It has long been
the consideration of the author that the contributions of Edsel Murphy,
specifically his general and special laws delineating the behavior of
inanimate objects, have not been fully appreciated."

http://www.bryantauto.com/law.htm refers to the "sixth-century king, Murphy
...."

----------

Clearly, the virtual equivalent "Finagle's Law" has an entirely jocular
origin. The more British equivalent "Sod's Law" also does: "sod" [abbrev.
of "sodomite" I guess] = "bugger", as in "bugger-up".

"Spode's Law" appears to be favored by chemists and the like. Partridge
dates this from ca. 1930 (but possibly on unreliable evidence). Beale is
dubious of the date, and speculates that "Spode" is a euphemism for "sod"
(and "Sod's Law" is said to be more recent). I am dubious of Beale's
speculation, "sod" being relatively mild and itself more or less a
euphemism for "bugger" or "f*ck" ... in fact, maybe "Sod" is more or less a
dysphemism for "Spode" (especially if Partridge's date is right). I don't
have any evidence but my casual speculation is that "Spode" originally
referred to expensive and fragile china: a natural chemist's metaphor for
things going wrong would be dropped and broken glassware, etc.

If there were no pertinent Messrs. Finagle, Sod, Spode, [Chadless,] one
might speculate that the etymological Messrs. Murphy and Reilly MAY be
apocryphal also.

-- Doug Wilson