Murphy's Law Article in Cleve. Plain Dealer

[Fred Shapiro]

I thought the article below might be of interest to some of the
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