Murphy´s Law
 

Hi all,

not specifically Helicopter related, but I picked up "Murphy´s" Name in the Sydney-R22 thread - was Shaun, wasn´t it?

The guy seems to be onboard of all and everything!

Does anyone know where this expression comes from? Who was Murphy?

E.g. I know that "The real McCoy" comes from a black locomotive engineer who developed an oiler for open bearings and so eliminated the need to handoil these bearings every couple of minutes. Lots of (bad) copies on the market would forge the Expression: "No, I want the real McCoy!"


So, how is the story with the law of Murphy?

3top
:cool:

I actually heard that the real mccoy thing was from prohibition. Apparently a rum runner named McCoy was known as the only one who could supply liquor that was not watered down. So patrons would ask if it was the real McCoy or not.

Both stories feasible, too lazy to check it out on the internet. But then again I'd probably find more than just these 2 versions.

Google ~~

The Origin of Murphy's Law

"If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it."

So who was Murphy anyway?
Born in 1917, Edward A. Murphy, Jr. was one of the engineers on the rocket-sled experiments that were done by the United States Air Force in 1949 to test human acceleration tolerances (USAF project MX981).

One experiment involved a set of 16 accelerometers mounted to different parts of the subject's body. There were two ways each sensor could be glued to its mount. Of course, somebody managed to install all 16 the wrong way around.

Murphy then made the original form of his pronouncement, which the test subject (Major John Paul Stapp) quoted at a news conference a few days later.

Within months, "Murphy's Law" had spread to various technical cultures connected to aerospace engineering, and finally reached the Webster's dictionary in 1958.

Tragically (and perhaps typically), the popular cliche we call "Murphy's Law" was never uttered by Edward Murphy.

Murphy's Law applies to Murphy's Law, too

The traditional version of Murphy's Law ("anything that can go wrong, will") is actually "Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives." Finagle's Law was popularized by science fiction author Larry Niven in several stories depicting a frontier culture of asteroid miners; this "Belter" culture professed a religion and/or running joke involving the worship of the dread god Finagle and his mad prophet Murphy.

Since then, the relentless truth inherent in Murphy's Law has become a persistent thorn in the side of humanity.

Here we go!

Thanks guys for clearing up "Murphy"! However, if his name was Edward A., who was the "Shaun" mentioned in the other thread?

The bootleg McCoy is a new one to me! I got the engineer version from a Discovery-Channel docu about the first trains in the US. McCoy being a black man worked of course only in the northern part of the states, but supposedly his product reached all the way south! Apparently most operators were not aware of this fact. It seems he was a technical genius all along with plenty of innovations in the railroad field!

If a customer did not get the "Real McCoy" the human oiler had to stand by all the time in case the copy failed the service! I gues this was a sort of lint oiler system....

Thanks again!

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haha, i think i heard about the bootlegger McCoy on the history channel too. oh well:rolleyes:

Shaun / Sean Murphy ran an operation in Western Australia. He was well known for his lack of interest in rules and laws, and his R-22 had an unknown number of real hours, although the log books showed something less than 2000. One day a rotor blade let go, his passenger escaped, but Murphy met his fate.

Later metallurgical examination of the blade showed that a crack had started several thousand starts ago, and propagated through the blade until it faled. The main reason for the crack moving along was Murphy - his clutch motor had failed while on and would not disengage, so he would start the engine with the rotor engaged - the sudden starts caused the crack to move a bit more each time. But it was also determined that the blade was at least 2500 hours old.

Or that is pretty close to the real story.

Ascend C.

if this true, then he must have pulled some other tricks too, as there is a start cut-out when the clutch is engaged and the rotor is below flying rpm.
However all these overtime/abuse stories actually give one hell of a testimony to the quality of Robinson blades!
I saw once a tree branch of about 5 inches across cleanly "milled" through to less then 1 inch, by a R-44 blade, before it decided it wa enough! It really looked like cut with a huge millhead! It is awesome how much it takes to destroy them.

Another interesting question about McCoy the black railroad engineer (if this one is true....:p ) would be, how a black man living in the north of the split US got to a scottish/irish name?

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Murphy at Edwards
 

Edward's AFB claims that Murphy's law originated there. The story is similar to the one above and can be found at:

http://www.edwards.af.mil/history/do...#39;s_law.html

It should be against the law.
 

On one of my many consulting assignments I came across a large poster hanging in the engineering department. It had a long list of the various laws including Murphy’s Law and the last law was: Coles Law, followed by the words "chopped cabbage".

:E