词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Origin of 'Murphy's Law'

Broadcast on COAST TO COAST: October 30, 2003

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- the story of one of life's little truths.

RS: It's a law we all live under, and it goes this way: "If anything can go wrong, it will." It's known as Murphy's Law.

AA: Murphy was Edward Murphy. He was a no-nonsense military officer, a captain. But he was also an engineer, based at an aircraft laboratory in Ohio. This was in the early days of the space program and high-performance flight.

RS: We learned all this from Bill Sloat, a reporter at the Plain Dealer¹ newspaper in Ohio. We saw a story he recently did on the history of Murphy's Law.

RS: So we called Bill up and had just started asking him questions, when, wouldn't you know it ...

SLOAT: "Can I start over for a minute? I've got to sneeze."

AA: "Go ahead, sneeze."

SLOAT: "I don't know why I had to sneeze."

RS: "Feel free."

AA: "If anything can go wrong, it will. [laughter]"

SLOAT: "Yeah, that's Murphy's Law."

RS: "And we'll pick up the story in the late 1940s."

SLOAT: "OK. So he's working at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in a laboratory. And so he was working on those machines that would spin people round and round and round, to test G-forces. Meanwhile, out at Edwards Air Force Base in California, there were engineers and they were building these rockets sleds and they would strap² guys and dummies³ into them and then fire them down like a railroad track. I think sometimes they went faster than the speed of sound."

RS: "And what was the purpose of that?"

SLOAT: "They wanted to see how fast human beings could go before they turned into mush. But they also needed a way to measure how much gravity they were receiving. So Murphy built some gauges⁵. And they attached them to this rocket sled and fired the sled, and then when they checked them, they registered zero. The sled worked and the guy who was riding it survived. But nobody knew how many G-forces he pulled, because the gauges malfunctioned⁶."

RS: "So then what happened?"

SLOAT: "Murphy chewed out the guys who installed the gauges and said 'if those guys can do something wrong, they will.' And then a guy named George Nichols overheard this. Now this is in 1949, thereabouts. The aerospace⁷ engineers had their own lingo⁸ and they were always coining laws and things. So they came up with 'Murphy's Law.' And the guy said 'Oh we got us a new law,' Nichols said that.

A few weeks later, John Paul Stapp, the rocket sled pilot, was doing a press conference out at Edwards Air Force Base, and one of the reporters asked him -- this is the story. Well, the reporter says, 'Are you worried about this?' And Stapp says, 'No, we're careful not to violate Murphy's Law.' Well, nobody knew what Murphy's Law was, except the aerospace engineers. And it became sort of along the lines of 'if it can happen, it will happen.' That's how it -- the metaphor⁹ morphed into that out at Edwards."

RS: "So, was the gauge⁴ ever fixed¹⁰? [laughter]"

SLOAT: "Murphy went back to Ohio, and the engineers out there got the gauges installed and they did work, yes."

RS: "So it was the technician鈥檚 fault?"

SLOAT: "Well, no, it was Murphy's fault -- or some of the technicians, or some of the technical people that were there thought it was Murphy's fault, because he should have checked the gauges to make sure they worked."

RS: "And if he had stayed, we might not have had this law."

SLOAT: "That's exactly right."

AA: "And this law has found its way around the world. You were telling me that you talked to someone in Russia about this?"

SLOAT: "Right, I sent an e-mail to a friend of mine, an electrical engineer and said 'do you know about Murphy's law?' And he sent me an e-mail back a couple of days later and said 'yes, we know that as the Law of Toast,' meaning that toast, the buttered side always falls down, or hits the ground. [laughter]"

RS: "So what do you think is the legacy¹¹ of Ed Murphy?"

SLOAT: "That's a great question. You know, when I was working on this story, I started looking up Murphy's Law. And there's, if you get on the Internet or you go to the library, and I did both, and there's like all kinds of, you know, Murphy鈥檚 laws. There's a guy in California named Arthur Block who even compiles them and collects them, and he had some great examples. Here's my favorite, Hyman's Highway Hypothesis: The shortest distance between two points is usually under construction. [laughter]"

RS: "Should we leave it at that?"

SLOAT: "Yeah, I don't think you could top it."

AA: Bill Sloat is a newspaper reporter at the Plain Dealer in Ohio. Ed Murphy died in 1990 but he was honored this month with an Ig Nobel Prize. These are given at Harvard University for achievements that first make people laugh, then make them think.

RS: Now, if you can think of any of your own versions of Murphy's Law, send them to [email protected]. We鈥檒l read our favorites on the air.

AA: You can find all of our programs on our Web site, voanews.com/wordmaster. With Rosanne Skirble, I鈥檓 Avi Arditti.

1 dealer   

n.商人，贩子

参考例句：

• The dealer spent hours bargaining for the painting.那个商人为购买那幅画花了几个小时讨价还价。
• The dealer reduced the price for cash down.这家商店对付现金的人减价优惠。

2 strap   

n.皮带，带子；v.用带扣住，束牢；用绷带包扎

参考例句：

• She held onto a strap to steady herself.她抓住拉手吊带以便站稳。
• The nurse will strap up your wound.护士会绑扎你的伤口。

3 dummies   

n.仿制品( dummy的名词复数 )；橡皮奶头；笨蛋；假传球

参考例句：

• If he dummies up, just try a little persuasion. 如果他不说话，稍微劝劝他就是了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• All the articles in the window are dummies. 橱窗里的全部物品都是仿制品。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 gauge   

v.精确计量；估计；n.标准度量；计量器

参考例句：

• Can you gauge what her reaction is likely to be?你能揣测她的反应可能是什么吗？
• It's difficult to gauge one's character.要判断一个人的品格是很困难的。

5 gauges   

n.规格( gauge的名词复数 )；厚度；宽度；标准尺寸v.（用仪器）测量( gauge的第三人称单数 )；估计；计量；划分

参考例句：

• A thermometer gauges the temperature. 温度计可测量温度。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The fuel gauges dropped swiftly. 燃料表指针迅速下降。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 malfunctioned   

发生故障(malfunction的过去式与过去分词)

参考例句：

• Is there any way the dye pack malfunctioned back at the bank? 什么能使爆色板在银行内就失效？ 来自电影对白
• The malfunctioned roller of his mouse is under repair. 他鼠标的滚轴失灵了，正在修呢。 来自互联网

7 aerospace   

adj.航空的，宇宙航行的

参考例句：

• The world's entire aerospace industry is feeling the chill winds of recession.全世界的航空航天工业都感受到了经济衰退的寒意。
• Edward Murphy was an aerospace engineer for the US Army.爱德华·墨菲是一名美军的航宇工程师。

8 lingo   

n.语言不知所云，外国话，隐语

参考例句：

• If you live abroad it helps to know the local lingo.住在国外，学一点当地的语言自有好处。
• Don't use all that technical lingo try and explain in plain English.别尽用那种专门术语，用普通的词语解释吧。

9 metaphor   

n.隐喻，暗喻

参考例句：

• Using metaphor,we say that computers have senses and a memory.打个比方，我们可以说计算机有感觉和记忆力。
• In poetry the rose is often a metaphor for love.玫瑰在诗中通常作为爱的象征。

10 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

11 legacy   

n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西

参考例句：

• They are the most precious cultural legacy our forefathers left.它们是我们祖先留下来的最宝贵的文化遗产。
• He thinks the legacy is a gift from the Gods.他认为这笔遗产是天赐之物。