"Murphy's Law" in Cleveland Plain Dealer

[Fred Shapiro]

The article below may be of interest to Murphyologists on this list.
As usual, I don't necessarily agree with everything imputed to me by
the reporter.

Fred Shapiro


                         Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio)

                     October 2, 2003 Thursday, Final / All

SECTION: NATIONAL; Pg. A1

LENGTH: 859 words

HEADLINE: One thing may go right for Murphy;
Famed law's namesake and other former aerospace engineers up for award

BYLINE: Bill Sloat, Plain Dealer Reporter

BODY:

   Dayton - Capt. Edward Murphy was a young engineer at the Wright
Field Aircraft Lab in the 1940s and 1950s when he helped launch one of
Ohio's oddest inventions - Murphy's Law.

   Most people know the law: Anything that can go wrong, will.

   But they don't know about Murphy, who is often described as an
imaginary, all-thumbs oaf who appeared in military cartoons.

   But Capt. Murphy, an all-but-for- gotten aerospace pioneer, will
start to get his due tonight at Harvard University.

   In a ceremony honoring some of the science world's wackiest
discoveries and research projects, Murphy is up for an Ig Nobel Prize.
The awards, in their 13th year, honor achievements that first make
people laugh, then make them think, said event organizer Marc Abrahams.

   Four real Nobel Prize winners will hand out tonight's Ig Nobels,
Abrahams said.

   The ceremony will be broadcast live online at www.improbable.com,
and unless something goes wrong, Murphy is considered a shoo-in for
the engineering award.

   Murphy died in 1990. His son, Edward, is expected to attend
tonight's ceremony.

   A handful of authors, historians and word sleuths have traced the
law's origin back to Murphy, who showed up at Edwards Air Force Base
in California for a day and half in 1949 during a rocket-sled test.

   Murphy brought G-force sensors developed in his Ohio lab -now part
of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base - for the experiment, which were
supposed to measure how much acceleration a human body could withstand
before turning into mush.

   George Nichols, an 83-year-old retired Northrop aerospace engineer,
was present when the sensors malfunctioned because they had been
installed incorrectly.

   Nichols said Murphy chewed out a technician and exclaimed, "If
there's a way to do it wrong, he will!"

   Nichols, who will share the Ig Nobel award with Murphy and the late
rocket-sled pilot, John Paul Stapp, said in a telephone interview from
his home in California that he christened the axiom Murphy's Law. He
said it quickly metamorphosed into, "If it can happen, it will happen"
at Edwards.

   It spread rapidly through the aerospace world and eventually
morphed into the version that's widely known today.

   "He was an obstinate fellow," Nichols recalled. "He cussed at the
technician."

   Nichols remembers Murphy as a spit-and-polish officer from West
Point.

   "We were more casual at Edwards; you might call it laid back. We
were off by ourselves at the North Base," Nichols said. "Being a West
Pointer, he was more than a typical officer. He had a pretty good
opinion of himself."

   Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Dictionary of Quotations, said it
is possible that Murphy's Law had other origins. Still, he's fairly
certain Harvard is honoring the right guys.

   "Others have suggested an origin in science-fiction fan circles, or
from a bigoted tradition of associating Irish people with
incompetence," Shapiro said. "I believe Nichols, Murphy and Stapp
originated Murphy's Law."

   He said America's original astronauts helped spread the story that
Murphy was a fictional character. And it turns out that retired Sen.
John Glenn, America's first astronaut to orbit the Earth, was the
source of the story that Murphy was an all-thumbs mechanic.

   Glenn wrote in "We Seven" - co-authored in 1962 by the seven
original astronauts - that Murphy was prone to making mistakes in the
Navy educational cartoons. In a chapter titled "Glitches in Time Save
Trouble," Glenn said the cartoon Murphy would put propellers on
backward or forget to tighten bolts.

   "He finally became such an institution that someone thought up a
principle of human error called Murphy's Law. It went like this: Any
part that can be installed wrong will be installed wrong at some point
by someone," Glenn wrote 41 years ago.

   In an interview this week, Glenn said he had probably made a
mistake.

   "I should have made that Dilbert instead of Murphy. I never knew
that Murphy's Law had anything to do with a real person," Glenn said.

   Glenn met Stapp during the early days of the astronaut program. "He
made some wild rides out there on the rocket sled," Glenn said. "He
was designing restraint harnesses for cockpits. I never knew he worked
on Murphy's Law, too."

   Author and historian Nick T. Spark once found a recorded interview
that Murphy did sometime after 1977 in which he was asked if he
regretted being associated with Murphy's Law.

   "No, I enjoy it," Murphy said in the interview. "Everybody likes to
think they have discovered a wonderful thing when they hear Murphy's
Law for the first time."

   Historians, writing in the Air Force publication Leading Edge,
delved into the tale of Murphy's Law and concluded that the genius of
Murphy, Nichols and Stapp went overlooked - just as their law
forewarns.

   "Perhaps it's to be expected that the participants at the creation
of the law would also be affected by it, especially one of its more
well known corollaries: On the rare occasion something is successful,
the wrong person will get the credit."

   To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:bsloat at plaind.com, 513-631-4125