Arthur Bloch - Murphys Law: The 26th Anniversary Edition

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Published by The Berkley Publishing Group

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375 Hudson Street

New York, New York 10014

Copyright 2003 by Arthur Bloch

Author photo by Keith Wall

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First edition: November 2003

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bloch, Arthur, 1948

Murphys law / Arthur Bloch,26th anniversary ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-101-66375-2

1. Murphys lawHumor. I. Title.

PN6231.M82B564 2003

818.5402dc22 2003060896.

murphology, mr-flgy, n.. The branch of knowledge relating to things going wrong.. The science of error. The gathering of sayings in this area and the repetition of such. (1)>Ir. Am. murph(y)-+>L. ologia>G. ologia, leg speak; (2)>Ir. Am. murph(y)-+>L. ologia>G. ologia, leg, gather]

A lot can go wrong in a quarter of a century. As technology lunges forward, dragging us along kicking and screaming, it is no surprise that Murphys Law has become a global phenomenon such as only its publishersand your humble authorcould have dreamed.

Since the 1977 printing of the first volume, the Murphys Law books have been published in more than thirty countries in some twenty-seven languages. People all over the world now speak of La Ley de Murphy, Murphyn Laki, LaLeggi di Murphy, Murphy Trvnyknyve, A Lei de Murphy, , Murphyho Zkony, Murphys Gesetz, , Prawa Murphyego, Murphys Lag, etc.

The initial volume included, for the first time in print, the story of the origin of Murphys Law. This scoop came about because of a fortunate (therefore, aberrant) set of circumstances. Prior to the books publication, a preview was included in the best-selling The Book of Lists. This led to a timely letter from Mr. George Nichols of California. We reprint it here:

Dear Arthur Bloch,

Understand you are going to publish a book, Murphys Lawand Other Reasons Why Things Go Wrong. Are you interested in including the true story of the naming of Murphys Law?

The event occurred in 1949 at Edwards Air Force Base, Muroc, California, during Air Force Project MX981. This was Colonel J. P. Stapps experimental crash research testing on the track at North Base. The work was being accomplished by Northrop Aircraft, under contract from Aero Medical Lab at Wright Field. I was Northrops project manager.

The Laws namesake was Captain Ed Murphy, a development engineer from Wright Field Aircraft Lab. Frustration with a strap transducer which was malfunctioning due to an error in wiring the strain gage bridges caused him to remarkIf there is any way to do it wrong, he willreferring to the technician who had wired the bridges at the Lab. I assigned Murphys Law to the statement and the associated variations.

... A couple of weeks after the naming, Colonel Stapp indicated, at a press conference, that our fine safety record during several years of simulated crash-force testing was the result of a firm belief in Murphys Law, and our consistent effort to deny the inevitable. The widespread reference to the Law in manufacturers ads within only a few months was fantasticand Murphys Law was off and running wild.

Sincerely,

George E. Nichols

Reliability & Quality Assurance Mgr.

Viking Project

Jet Propulsion LabNASA

Perhaps theres more detail there than we signed up for, but the salient point is this: Murphys Law was a misquote. Should this really be much of a surprise?

A recent Google search for Murphys Law yielded more than 110,000 Web pages. It would be cute to say that back in 1977 there were none, but this isnt exactly true. For one of the first compilations of Laws I ever came across was a long, pin-fed, fan-fold list from the Arpinet, a precursor to the Internet that was used mostly by universities, research facilities, and government agencies. The Laws have always been popular among nerds, even when this term had yet to be coined.

But when I submitted the first manuscript to a publisher there was an interesting stipulation. All book manuscripts must be typed. Printing by computer was not allowed. (Not that I had onepersonal computers had not yet been invented.) There was a feeling then, which has never been disproven, that people writing on computers tend to lack literary discipline. These days, of course, book contracts specify that manuscripts be submitted in MSWord. My last five books have all been sent to the publisher via e-mail. This one, for some reason, requires that I do it the old-fashioned wayon a three-and-a-half-inch floppy disk.

The present volume contains the best from the many previous Murphys Law books, in addition to a selection of new material. The future, in Murphological terms, is a vast and largely unimagined new world of things that can go wrong. Its good to know there will always be something to write about.

Arthur Bloch

Oakland, California

If anything can go wrong, it will.

Nothing is as easy as it looks.

Everything takes longer than you think it will.

If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.

If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly develop.

Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.

Every solution breeds new problems.

It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.