Major Edward Aloysius Murphy, Jr. American Engineer/Pilot Born: January 11, 1918 in the Panama Canal Zone Died: July 17, 1990 in Los Angeles, California at age 72. Location Interred: Los Angeles, CA? --Biographical information from: http://www.xpergo.com

Murphy was a real person. Born in 1918, Edward A. Murphy, Jr. was one of the engineers on rocket-sled experiments to test human acceleration tolerances conducted by the United States Air Force in 1949. One experiment required the mounting of 16 accelerometers to various parts of the Major John Paul Stapp's body. Major Stapp was then belted securely into an acceleration couch in the rocket-sled which was mounted on a set of rails. The rockets were ignited on schedule, and Major Stapp zoomed down the tracks. The instruments recorded nothing. Now, this experiment took many hours of work from a whole team of people to set up, plus the rocket fuel and the customized instruments. Murphy and the other engineers were, understandably, upset. They went over everything and soon discovered the problem. There were two ways each sensor could be glued to its mount. Somebody managed to install all 16 of them backwards.

Stapp’s tests at Holloman revealed more than man’s physical tolerance to riding on the backs of rocket sleds. Impressed with the doctor’s wit and his "Ironical Paradox," namely that "the universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle," members of his testing team came up with a few of their own aphorisms, including one "law" that’s become a household name, if a pessimistic one — Murphy’s Law. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, Jan. 13, 1977, by columnist Jack Smith and in the August 28, 1981, employee newsletter for the Northrop aerospace company, Northrop employee George E. Nichols was present at the birth of the popular law.

According to Nichols, human acceleration testing in 1949 at Muroc (now Edwards) Air Force Base, CA, begat the legend. Capt. Edward A. Murphy Jr., was one of the development engineers on the rocket-sled tests conducted in the late 1940s and early 1950s at Muroc and Holloman AFB, NM, to test the limits of human exposure to gravitational acceleration. At the time, the West Point graduate was assigned to the Wright Field Aircraft Lab, which evolved into the current Armstrong Laboratory at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. During one 1949 experiment, a lab technician improperly wired sensors on a strap transducer. Then, according to Nichols and Stapp, Murphy exclaimed in frustration, "If there is any way to do it wrong, he will." Nichols tagged the statement "Murphy’s Law." Later, Stapp launched the axiom to the masses when he commented at a news conference on his project’s excellent safety record during years of simulated crash force testing, "with due regard to Murphy’s Law." According to Nichols, there was widespread reference to the law in the advertising copy of major aerospace companies within a matter of months. The rest is history.

While Stapp’s tests led to many innovations in aircraft ejections procedures, today it’s Murphy’s Law that captures people’s imagination. Perhaps it’s to be expected that the participants at the creation of the law would also be affected by it, especially one of it’s more well-known corollaries: on the rare occasion something is successful, the wrong person will get the credit. As the new creed spread throughout the aerospace industry and began its metamorphism into a truism of mythic proportions, it mutated into various forms, including a number of corollaries. When asked to recall the law, however, most people will tell you it’s "Anything that can go wrong, will." Nowadays, you can find Murphy’s Law customized to just about any subject.