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We headed to the Murphy's Law category in Yahoo!, hoping to uncover the origin of the pessimistic rule used to explain anything that goes awry. Luckily, nothing went wrong. The second site we clicked on, Murphy's Laws and Corollaries, boasted a link titled "Murphy's Law Was Invented Here." We clicked through and found ourselves at the official web site of Edwards Air Force Base. The page provided a succinct answer to your inquiry. Captain Edward A. Murphy was an air force engineer who worked at Edwards AFB on a 1949 project studying how much sudden deceleration a
person can stand. During the rocket sled experiments, 16 accelerometers were mounted to a human subject's body to measure impact during a crash. Upon discovering that a technician had installed all 16 incorrectly, Murphy exclaimed angrily, "If there is any way to do it wrong, he'll find it." Murphy's comment was quoted at a press conference and, due to its nugget of universal truth, a generic form of the "law" quickly spread. It even made it into the dictionary in 1958. A number of web sites, however, contradict the wording offered by the Edwards Air Force base site. The popular saying, "If anything can go
wrong, it will" is actually Finagle's Law. The real, unadulterated Murphy's Law is: If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it. Even Murphy's Law is not immune to, well, Murphy's Law (or should we say Finagle's?).
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