Antedating of the Term "Murphy's Law"

[Shapiro, Fred]

I believe that Dave's analysis of dates, if correct, means that we have come close to pretty much disproving the standard Edwards Air Force Base mythology about the origin of "Murphy's Law."

Fred Shapiro



________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Dave Wilton [dave at WILTON.NET]
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 11:29 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Antedating of the Term "Murphy's Law"

Correction: the introductory letter to biologists also contains a citation
for a 1947 journal article, this pushes the incidents with the physicists
out to no earlier than 1948-49.

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Dave Wilton
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 7:11 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Antedating of the Term "Murphy's Law"

I can't be certain as Roe does not give the dates for her surveys of
scientists.

She spent a year with each of three different groups of scientists:
biologists, physicists, and social scientists, in that order. She includes
the text of a letter introducing herself to a biologist that cites a 1946
work. As the incidents with the physicists are the ones with the references
to Murphy's Law, we can assume they took place no earlier than 1947 and no
later than 1950. My best guess is that the period studying the physicists
was in 1949.

I haven't read the whole book in detail, so there may be some other
references to dates, but none that are apparent on a skim through the pages.

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Baker, John
Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2008 6:14 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Antedating of the Term "Murphy's Law"

        Do the periods described on pp. 46 - 47 or on p. 214 predate the
1948 incident from which some suppose Murphy's law took its name?


John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Dave Wilton
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2007 7:13 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Antedating of the Term "Murphy's Law"

I got a copy of the book from the UC Berkeley library. There's no
explanation of who Murphy was, but more slightly more complete quotes
than those given by the Google Books snippets follow:

Roe, Anne, _The Making of a Scientist_ (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company,
1952, 1953.

pp.46-47:
"There were a number of particularly delightful incidents. There is, for
example, the physicist who introduced me to one of my favorite 'laws,'
which he described as 'Murphy's law or the fourth law of thermodynamics'
(actually there were only three last I heard) which states: 'If anything
can go wrong it will.'"

p. 214:
"It was while working on this part of the study that I ran into the
perfect exemplification of 'Murphy's law' at one university, where
everything that could go wrong did!"

p. 224:
"Certainly this was Murphy's law in operation,--but I will never be the
same again."


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Shapiro, Fred
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 7:28 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Antedating of the Term "Murphy's Law"

Google Books appears to show the term _Murphy's law_ in a 1953 book,
_The Making of a Scientist_ by Anne Roe.  This would be two years
earlier than the earliest use of the term previously found by anyone.

I have not yet checked the original book, but will do so and report to
this list on it.  The Google Books snippets do not show any explanation
of why the name Murphy was used, but the snippets may cut off valuable
information.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                                         Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research  Yale University Press
Yale Law School                                        ISBN 0300107986
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu
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