"Murphy's law" 1951 and 1952

[Jonathan Lighter]

FWIW re the Manhattan Project,  the physicists involved were supposedly concerned that there was a very remote chance that the detonation of the bomb might create a chain reaction that would incinerate earth's atmosphere.

Perhaps that concern led E. J. Murphy to enunciate "Murphy's Law."

Just another SWAG.

JL


--- On Fri, 1/2/09, Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU> wrote:

> From: Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
> Subject: "Murphy's law" 1951 and 1952
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Date: Friday, January 2, 2009, 6:34 AM
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society
> <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
> Subject:      "Murphy's law" 1951 and 1952
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> A little more on the early "Murphy's law"
> texts.
>
> Scientific American, September 1952 "The Amateur
> Scientist: About home-made
> cloud chambers and the fine telescope of a Portugese navy
> officer," Conducted
> by Albert G. Ingalls, pp. 179f.
>
> p.181 col. 1
> At this point enters the well-known 'first law of
> research'--sometimes called
> 'Murphy's law.' The law may be stated roughly
> as follows: 'If anything can go
> wrong, it will.'
> [This text is part of a report by I. [Isaac] Clyde Cornog,
> of the
> Randal Morgan
> Laboratory of Physics at U. Penn. So I.C. Cornog [U. Penn.
> PhD 1928] is, so
> far, the earliest known named user of the collocation.]
>
> p.182 col. 3
> The department [at U. Penn.] has built several successful
> diffusion chambers
> based on Dr. [I. Clyde] Cornog's description, but in
> every case only
> after some
> sharp tussles with Murphy's law.
> [This text is by Ingalls.]
>
>
> Genetic Psychology Monographs: Child Behavior, Animal
> Behavior, and
> Comparative Psychology. May, 1951, Volume 43, Second Half
> A Psychological Study of Physical Scientists, By Anne Roe,
> pp. 121-235
> p.204
> As for himself he realized that this was the inexorable
> working of the second
> law of the thermodynamics which stated Murphy's law
> "If anything can go wrong
> it will." I always liked Murphy's law, I was told
> that by an architect.
> ["that" is not necessarily "Murphy's
> law," but could refer to an earlier story
> in this text about a different architect and about church
> statues, perhaps
> vaguely reminiscent of A. Gaudi.]
> [This text is part of a response by an unnamed theoretical
> physicist on being
> shown a picture by the psychologist, Roe. Elsewhere in this
> publication there
> is further biographical information about this individual,
> "TP [presumably,
> Theoretical Physicist] 3." It may eventually be
> possibly to identify this
> individual. For now, I'll note that there is another
> physicist named Cornog,
> Robert Cornog [is he a younger brother of I.C. Cornog?].
> There are, of course,
> many people named Murphy. E.g. physicist Edgar J. Murphy
> [NYU PhD 1934],
> presumably known to R. Cornog [UC Berkeley PhD 1940]; both
> worked on atomic
> weapons. Another contemporary Murphy: psychologist Gardner
> Murphy.]
>
> Stephen Goranson
> http://www.duke.edu/~goranson
>
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