robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison) (11/01/84)
This is an APB of great general interest. It concerns that most mysterious figure of modern times -- Murphy. Here's the background: There have been several notes on the net recently about a book, "A Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown", a collection of Science Humor edited by Robert A. Baker, and published in 1963 by Prentice-Hall. So I got it out of the library to reread. The very first piece presents a number of "laws" that I am sure you will recognize: If anything can go wrong, it will. If anything just can't go wrong, it will anyway. When things are going well, something will go wrong. When things just can't get any worse, they will. Anytime things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something. The author of this piece, Francis P. Chisolm, describes these as CHISOLM'S LAWS. His piece is republished from something entitled "Motive" (no date given), and the piece is called "The Chisolm Effect". The piece quotes from something published in 1958. The piece itself is referenced in another item in SAOASEG (Joel Cohen, "On the Nature of Matehmatical Proof") dated 1961. So apparently Chisolm's laws were published between 1958 and 1961. Today we know these (universally?) as Murphy's laws. When did Murphy become the author? Is Chisolm the real author? How did he come to be forgotten? Why isn't he (or why aren't his heirs) fighting to recover his authorship? Could it be (as my daughter Naomi suggested) that: SOMETHING WENT WRONG? Please provide information, if you have any. If I don't receive any hard info soon, I shall try to contact Chisolm, so I would appreciate any info from someone who knows (of) him. I will summarize data sent to me. I suggest that public discussion (if any) continue in net.books. (I rarely post a note to more than one newsgroup. I thought this note was worth a wider posting to solve the mystery. I hope you agree it was worth seeing more than once, if that's the way your news program works.) - Toby Robison allegra!eosp1!robison or: decvax!ittvax!eosp1!robison alternate: princeton!eosp1!robison
bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys) (11/05/84)
> When did Murphy become the author? Is Chisolm the real author? How > did he come to be forgotten? Why isn't he (or why aren't his heirs) > fighting to recover his authorship? Could it be (as my daughter > Naomi suggested) that: SOMETHING WENT WRONG? Murphy's Law, of course. -- "When evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve" Bill Jefferys 8-% Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712 (USnail) {allegra,ihnp4}!{ut-sally,noao}!utastro!bill (uucp) bill%utastro.UTEXAS@ut-sally.ARPA (ARPANET)
g-rh@cca.UUCP (Richard Harter) (11/06/84)
[]
Murphy of Murphy's Law is Edwin Murphy (still living) who was on
the Rocket Sled program in the early 50's. In one of their tests a
technician who had to connect the instrumentation was not informed of
which polarity to use and connected all of the instrumentation backwards.
The test was eminently successful but no data was gathered. In the
press conference afterwards Murphy made his now famous observation.
Murphy's Law was picked up by a number of the Aerospace companies and
took off from there.
Richard Harterjack@vu44.UUCP (Jack Jansen) (11/06/84)
Well, about the disappearance of the original author of
the Laws: Up to a few years ago I always heard of "The Laws of Klipstein
and Murphy", and, suddenly, Klipstein's name disappeared.
Maybe a solution is that these Laws are in some way sacred,
like the Pyramids.
The Laws and the Pyramids have something in common.
The Laws work, but cannot be proved using our science.
Also, the Pyramids are there, and have some very interesting
properties, which we cannot account for.
Also, as you might now, the people who first made their way into
the Pyramids became very vulnerable to the Laws, which can be
deducted from the fact that a lot of them died in some pretty
weird ways, soon after their discoveries.....
--
Jack Jansen, {seismo|philabs|decvax}!mcvax!vu44!jack
or ...!vu44!htsa!jack
"Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure"
Oscar Wilde, 1894.
"Most unix(tm) programmers are great masters of style"
Jack Jansen, 1984.