So Now You Know
In 1949, the U.S. Air Force conducted a series of tests on the effect of rapid deceleration on pilots, so they could get a better understanding of how much force people’s bodies can tolerate in a plane crash. The tests consisted of strapping volunteers into a rocket-propelled sled, accelerating the sled, and then slamming on the brakes - bringing the sled to a very abrupt stop. The volunteers wore special harness fitted with 16 sensors that measure the acceleration, or G-forces, on different parts of their body.
The harness was the invention of an Air Force captain named Edward A. Murphy … but the 16 individual sensors were installed by someone else.
On the day of the fateful test, a volunteer named John Paul Stapp was strapped into the sled and the rockets were fired. The test went off as expected - the sled accelerated to a high speed and then abruptly braked to a stop, subjecting his body to such enormous forces that, according to one account, when he stumbled off the sled, his eyes were bloodshot and his nose was bleeding. Stapp’s body is believed to have endured forces equivalent to 40G, or 40 times the force of gravity. But no one will ever know for sure, because all 16 of the sensors failed, each one giving a zero reading for the test.
When Murphy examined the harness to see what had gone wrong, he discovered that the technician who had installed the sensors had wired every single one of them backward. Because of a simple human error, Stapp’s life had been put at risk in vain.
There are varying accounts of what Murphy said next - he may have cursed out the technician responsible for the mistake, saying "If there is any way to do it wrong, he’ll find it." Whatever he said originally, at a press conference a few days later Stapp quoted him as having said, "If there are two or more ways to do something and one of those results in a catastrophe, then someone will do it that way."
Within months, this expression had became known throughout the aerospace industry as "Murphy’s Law."
The harness was the invention of an Air Force captain named Edward A. Murphy … but the 16 individual sensors were installed by someone else.
On the day of the fateful test, a volunteer named John Paul Stapp was strapped into the sled and the rockets were fired. The test went off as expected - the sled accelerated to a high speed and then abruptly braked to a stop, subjecting his body to such enormous forces that, according to one account, when he stumbled off the sled, his eyes were bloodshot and his nose was bleeding. Stapp’s body is believed to have endured forces equivalent to 40G, or 40 times the force of gravity. But no one will ever know for sure, because all 16 of the sensors failed, each one giving a zero reading for the test.
When Murphy examined the harness to see what had gone wrong, he discovered that the technician who had installed the sensors had wired every single one of them backward. Because of a simple human error, Stapp’s life had been put at risk in vain.
There are varying accounts of what Murphy said next - he may have cursed out the technician responsible for the mistake, saying "If there is any way to do it wrong, he’ll find it." Whatever he said originally, at a press conference a few days later Stapp quoted him as having said, "If there are two or more ways to do something and one of those results in a catastrophe, then someone will do it that way."
Within months, this expression had became known throughout the aerospace industry as "Murphy’s Law."
