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Murphy's law is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: ''Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong''. == History == The perceived perversity of the universe has long been a subject of comment, and precursors to the modern version of Murphy's law are not hard to find. The concept may be as old as humanity.〔Hand, p. 197〕 Recent significant research in this area has been conducted by members of the American Dialect Society. ADS member Stephen Goranson has found a version of the law, not yet generalized or bearing that name, in a report by Alfred Holt at an 1877 meeting of an engineering society.
Mathematician Augustus De Morgan wrote on June 23, 1866:〔"Supplement to the Budget of Paradoxes," The Athenaeum no. 2017 page 836 col. 2 (later reprints: e.g. 1872, 1915, 1956, 2000 )〕 "The first experiment already illustrates a truth of the theory, well confirmed by practice, what-ever can happen will happen if we make trials enough." In later publications "whatever can happen will happen" occasionally is termed "Murphy's law," which raises the possibility—if something went wrong—that "Murphy" is "De Morgan" misremembered (an option, among others, raised by Goranson on the American Dialect Society list). American Dialect Society member Bill Mullins has found a slightly broader version of the aphorism in reference to stage magic. The British stage magician Nevil Maskelyne wrote in 1908:
In 1948, humorist Paul Jennings coined the term ''resistentialism'', a jocular play on ''resistance'' and ''existentialism'', to describe "seemingly spiteful behavior manifested by inanimate objects",〔Paul Hellwig, Insomniac's Dictionary (Ivy Books, 1989)〕 where objects that cause problems (like lost keys or a runaway bouncy ball) are said to exhibit a high degree of malice toward humans.〔(Report on Resistentialism ), The Spectator , 23 April 1948〕〔''(Thingness of Things )'', The New York Times, 13 June 1948〕 The contemporary form of Murphy's law goes back as far as 1952, as an epigraph to a mountaineering book by John Sack, who described it as an "ancient mountaineering adage":
Fred R. Shapiro, the editor of the ''Yale Book of Quotations'', has shown that in 1952 the adage was called "Murphy's law" in a book by Anne Roe, quoting an unnamed physicist:
In May 1951,〔''Genetic Psychology Monographs'' volume 43, page 204〕 Anne Roe gives a transcript of an interview (part of a Thematic Apperception Test, asking impressions on a photograph) with Theoretical Physicist number 3: "...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’." Anne Roe's papers are in the American Philosophical Society archives in Philadelphia; those records (as noted by Stephen Goranson on the American Dialect Society list 12/31/2008) identify the interviewed physicist as Howard Percy "Bob" Robertson (1903–1961). Robertson's papers are at the Caltech archives; there, in a letter Robertson offers Roe an interview within the first three months of 1949 (as noted by Goranson on American Dialect Society list 5/9/2009). The Robertson interview apparently predated the Muroc scenario said by Nick Spark (''American Aviation Historical Society Journal'' 48 (2003) p. 169) to have occurred in or after June, 1949. The name "Murphy's law" was not immediately secure. A story by Lee Correy in the February 1955 issue of ''Astounding Science Fiction'' referred to "Reilly's law," which "states that in any scientific or engineering endeavor, anything that can go wrong ''will'' go wrong". Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss was quoted in the ''Chicago Daily Tribune'' on February 12, 1955, saying "I hope it will be known as Strauss' law. It could be stated about like this: If anything bad can happen, it probably will."〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=''Chicago Daily Tribune'', February 12, 1955, p. 5 )〕 Arthur Bloch, in the first volume (1977) of his ''Murphy's Law, and Other Reasons Why Things Go WRONG'' series, prints a letter that he received from George E. Nichols, a quality assurance manager with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Nichols recalled an event that occurred in 1949 at Edwards Air Force Base, Muroc, California that, according to him, is the origination of Murphy's law, and first publicly recounted by USAF Col. John Paul Stapp. An excerpt from the letter reads:
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