Check URL http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v 9i5/murphy/murphy4.html . They just don't have a link yet.
Text:
The Voice of Murphy
Despite how badly my interview with Yeager concluded, I feel strangely relieved. I don't feel nearly so bad that I?ve failed to find a definitive answer about the origins of Murphy's Law. Yeager's right: there is no definitive truth. History, as the old saying goes, is nothing more than a pack of lies that everyone agrees are true. The second thing that transpired was that I unexpectedly received several emails from Robert Murphy. In one he wrote that he wanted to clarify that his father passed away in 1990, not 1989 as he'd written in his letter to the editor. In another he wrote that he'd found a note on Los Angeles West Point Society stationery asking ?if they could make a plaque about Murphy?s Law for possible submission to the Academy. In other words,? he continued, ?this was not something my father was campaigning for. As I told you, self promotion was completely foreign to my Father?? In the same email Robert cited the comments I made at our meeting and noted that in his view ?George Nichols is just an angry old man who regrets that the Law was not named after him, nothing more. He is a self-tainted source.?
And then Robert wrote an email containing some exciting news. He?d been going through some things ? I?d asked him to please find a photo of his father ? and he?d come across a cassette tape of a radio interview about the Law. He presents it, and a photo of his father working on some rocket sled components, to me at a subsequent meeting. The cassette tape is unmarked, and there is no spoken introduction whatsoever on the recording. I guess it might be the CBC, or NPR, and probably dates from the time of the People article, early 1980?s. It?s as close as I?m going to get to interviewing Ed Murphy, and of course I can?t wait to hear it.
?Yes, Virginia,? says the nameless commentator broadly, ?there really is a Murphy. Ed Murphy, who we?ve got on the phone today...?
Ed Murphy?s voice is serious, deliberate and humorless. Absolutely appropriate, I decide, for a career engineer. Asked to tell his version of the Murphy?s Law story he goes into the kind of excruciating detail you?d expect from someone obsessed with precision. It leaves the interviewer, who apparently believed he was going to interview a slick, witty personality, completely flummoxed. The senior Murphy said clearly in the interview that, as Nichols and Hill claimed, he wasn?t part of the Gee Whiz team. He?d only been to Edwards once during Stapp?s tests. He was working at Wright Field he recalled, on a project similar to Stapp?s but which involved the use of a centrifuge. He?d designed some innovative electronic measuring equipment for the centrifuge, and when John Stapp heard about that, he called and asked if Murphy?d design some similar components for the Whiz. Murphy?d leapt at the chance, he said, because he admired Stapp and the groundbreaking work he was doing.
According to Murphy, he sent his equipment out to Edwards and it worked well for a few tests. But then something went wrong. Stapp called him to say that he?d ?risked his neck riding on that darn sled? and the instruments had produced no data. ?So I got on the next airplane to Muroc and had a meeting with him,? Murphy explained. ?And I said all right, let?s see the accelerometers.? An examination revealed to Murphy that ? like Hill and Nichols said ??they had put the strain gauges on the transducers ninety degrees off.?
Yet contrary to what Nichols said about Murphy not taking the blame for the trouble, Murphy said in the interview that he felt ? to a certain degree ? it was his fault. ?I had made very accurate drawings of the thing for them, and discussed it with the people who were going to make them? but I hadn?t covered everything,? he sighed. ?I didn?t tell them that they had positively to orient them in only one direction. So I guess about that tim
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Check URL http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v 9i5/murphy/murphy4.html . They just don't have a link yet.
Text:
The Voice of Murphy
Despite how badly my interview with Yeager concluded, I feel strangely relieved. I don't feel nearly so bad that I?ve failed to find a definitive answer about the origins of Murphy's Law. Yeager's right: there is no definitive truth. History, as the old saying goes, is nothing more than a pack of lies that everyone agrees are true.
The second thing that transpired was that I unexpectedly received several emails from Robert Murphy. In one he wrote that he wanted to clarify that his father passed away in 1990, not 1989 as he'd written in his letter to the editor. In another he wrote that he'd found a note on Los Angeles West Point Society stationery asking ?if they could make a plaque about Murphy?s Law for possible submission to the Academy. In other words,? he continued, ?this was not something my father was campaigning for. As I told you, self promotion was completely foreign to my Father?? In the same email Robert cited the comments I made at our meeting and noted that in his view ?George Nichols is just an angry old man who regrets that the Law was not named after him, nothing more. He is a self-tainted source.?
And then Robert wrote an email containing some exciting news. He?d been going through some things ? I?d asked him to please find a photo of his father ? and he?d come across a cassette tape of a radio interview about the Law. He presents it, and a photo of his father working on some rocket sled components, to me at a subsequent meeting.
The cassette tape is unmarked, and there is no spoken introduction whatsoever on the recording. I guess it might be the CBC, or NPR, and probably dates from the time of the People article, early 1980?s. It?s as close as I?m going to get to interviewing Ed Murphy, and of course I can?t wait to hear it.
?Yes, Virginia,? says the nameless commentator broadly, ?there really is a Murphy. Ed Murphy, who we?ve got on the phone today...?
Ed Murphy?s voice is serious, deliberate and humorless. Absolutely appropriate, I decide, for a career engineer. Asked to tell his version of the Murphy?s Law story he goes into the kind of excruciating detail you?d expect from someone obsessed with precision. It leaves the interviewer, who apparently believed he was going to interview a slick, witty personality, completely flummoxed.
The senior Murphy said clearly in the interview that, as Nichols and Hill claimed, he wasn?t part of the Gee Whiz team. He?d only been to Edwards once during Stapp?s tests. He was working at Wright Field he recalled, on a project similar to Stapp?s but which involved the use of a centrifuge. He?d designed some innovative electronic measuring equipment for the centrifuge, and when John Stapp heard about that, he called and asked if Murphy?d design some similar components for the Whiz. Murphy?d leapt at the chance, he said, because he admired Stapp and the groundbreaking work he was doing.
According to Murphy, he sent his equipment out to Edwards and it worked well for a few tests. But then something went wrong. Stapp called him to say that he?d ?risked his neck riding on that darn sled? and the instruments had produced no data. ?So I got on the next airplane to Muroc and had a meeting with him,? Murphy explained. ?And I said all right, let?s see the accelerometers.? An examination revealed to Murphy that ? like Hill and Nichols said ??they had put the strain gauges on the transducers ninety degrees off.?
Yet contrary to what Nichols said about Murphy not taking the blame for the trouble, Murphy said in the interview that he felt ? to a certain degree ? it was his fault. ?I had made very accurate drawings of the thing for them, and discussed it with the people who were going to make them? but I hadn?t covered everything,? he sighed. ?I didn?t tell them that they had positively to orient them in only one direction. So I guess about that tim
There was a story about this very recently here. Why not a reference.
Wasn't this the same in Day of the Triffids, except everyone went blind and was eaten by vegetables?
Did you see the foot? It's funny. Laugh. Slashdot will never be CNN. And that's a good thing.