Tonight I died...

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. 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.

It is found that anything that can go wrong at sea generally does go wrong sooner or later, so it is not to be wondered that owners prefer the safe to the scientific.... Sufficient stress can hardly be laid on the advantages of simplicity. The human factor cannot be safely neglected in planning machinery. If attention is to be obtained, the engine must be such that the engineer will be disposed to attend to it.[1]

Mathematician Augustus De Morgan on June 23, 1866 "Supplement to the Budget of Paradoxes," The Athenaeum no. 2017 page 836 col. 2 [and later reprints: e.g., 1872, 1915, 1956, 2000] wrote: "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 American Dialect Society list).[2]

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:

It is an experience common to all men to find that, on any special occasion, such as the production of a magical effect for the first time in public, everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Whether we must attribute this to the malignity of matter or to the total depravity of inanimate things, whether the exciting cause is hurry, worry, or what not, the fact remains.[3]

The contemporary form of Murphy's law goes back as far as 1952, as an epigraph to a mountaineering book by Jack Sack, who described it as an "ancient mountaineering adage":

Anything that can possibly go wrong, does.[4]

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:

he described [it] as "Murphy's law or the fourth law of thermodynamics" (actually there were only three last I heard) which states: "If anything can go wrong, it will."[5]

In May 1951, in 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".[6] 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."[7]

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:

...The Law's namesake was Capt. 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 remark – "If there is any way to do it wrong, he will" – referring to the technician who had wired the bridges at the Lab. I assigned Murphy's Law to the statement and the associated variations.

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List ye, O man, hear ye the wisdom.
Hear ye the Word that shall fill thee with Life.
Hear ye the Word that shall banish the darkness.
Hear ye the voice that shall banish the night.

Mystery and wisdom have I brought to my children;
knowledge and power descended from old.
Know ye not that all shall be opened
when ye shall find the oneness of all?

One shall ye be with the Masters of Mystery,
Conquerors of Death and Masters of Life.
Aye, ye shall learn of the flower of Amenti
the blossom of life that shines in the Halls.
In Spirit shall ye reach that Halls of Amenti
and bring back the wisdom that liveth in Light.
Know ye the gateway to power is secret.
Know ye the gateway to life is through death.
Aye, through death but not as ye know death,
but a death that is life and is fire and is Light.

Desireth thou to know the deep, hidden secret?
Look in thy heart where the knowledge is bound.
Know that in thee the secret is hidden,
the source of all life and the source of all death.

List ye, O man, while I tell the secret,
reveal unto thee the secret of old.

Deep in Earth's heart lies the flower,
the source of the Spirit
that binds all in its form.
or know ye that the Earth is living in body
as thou art alive in thine own formed form.
The Flower of Life is as thine own place of Spirit
and streams through the Earth
as thine flows through thy form;
giving of life to the Earth and its children,
renewing the Spirit from form unto form.
This is the Spirit that is form of thy body,
shaping and moulding into its form.

Know ye, O man, that thy form is dual,
balanced in polarity while formed in its form.
Know that when fast on thee Death approaches,
it is only because thy balance is shaken.
It is only because one pole has been lost.

Know that the secret of life in Amenti
is the secret of restoring the balance of poles.
All that exists has form and is living
because of the Spirit of life in its poles.

See ye not that in Earth's heart
is the balance of all things that exist
and have being on its face?
The source of thy Spirit is drawn from Earth's heart,
for in thy form thou are one with the Earth

When thou hast learned to hold thine own balance,
then shalt thou draw on the balance of Earth.
Exist then shalt thou while Earth is existing,
changing in form, only when Earth, too, shalt change:
Tasting not of death, but one with this planet,
holding thy form till all pass away.

List ye, O man, whilst I give the secret so that
ye, too, shalt taste not of change.
One hour each day shalt thou lie
with thine head pointed to the
place of the positive pole (north).
One hour each day shalt thy head be
pointed to the place of the negative pole (south).
Whilst thy head is placed to the northward,
hold thou thy consciousness from the chest to the head.

And when thy head is placed southward,
hold thou thy thought from chest to the feet.
Hold thou in balance once in each seven,
and thy balance will retain the whole of its strength.
Aye, if thou be old, thy body will freshen
and thy strength will become as a youth's.
This is the secret known to the Masters
by which they hold off the fingers of Death.
Neglect not to follow the path I have shown,
for when thou hast passed beyond years
to a hundred to neglect
it will mean the coming of Death.

Hear ye, my words, and follow the pathway.
Keep thou thy balance and live on in life.

Hear ye, O man, and list to my voice.
List to the wisdom that gives thee of Death.
When at the end of thy work appointed,
thou may desire to pass from this life,
pass to the plane where the Suns of the Morning
live and have being as Children of Light.
Pass without pain and pass without sorrow
into the plane where is eternal Light.

First lie at rest with thine head to the eastward.
Fold thou thy hands at the Source of thy life (solar plexus).

Place thou thy consciousness in the life seat.
Whirl it and divide to north and to south.

Send thou the one out toward the northward.
Send thou the other out to the south.
Relax thou their hold upon thy being.
Forth from thy form will thy silver spark fly,
upward and onward to the Sun of the morning,
blending with Light, at one with its source.

There it shall flame till desire shall be created.
Then shall return to a place in a form.

Know ye, O men, that thus pass the great Souls,
changing at will from life unto life.
Thus ever passes the Avatar,
willing his Death as he wills his own life.

List ye, O man, drink of my wisdom.
Learn ye the secret that is Master of Time.
Learn ye how those ye call Masters are
able to remember the lives of the past.

Great is the secret yet easy to master,
giving to thee the mastery of time.
When upon thee death fast approaches,
fear not but know ye are master of Death.

Relax thy body, resist not with tension.
Place in thy heart the flame of thy Soul.
Swiftly then sweep it to the seat of the triangle.

Hold for a moment, then move to the goal.
This, thy goal, is the place between thine eyebrows,
the place where the memory of life must hold sway.
Hold thou thy flame here in thy brain-seat
until the fingers of Death grasp thy Soul.
Then as thou pass through the state of transition,
surely the memories of life shall pass, too.

Then shalt the past be as one with the present.
Then shall the memory of all be retained.
Free shalt thou be from all retrogression.
The things of the past shall live in today.

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