Laws That Aren't Laws: Murphy's Law - Episode 1

“If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.” Murphy’s Law is now
a part of our culture, used to describe wrong outcomes of every
sort, from how buttered toast falls to the way catastrophes
strike.


People have uttered similar laments since time immemorial. But
the modern origin of the phrase traces back to two men on one
fateful day in 1949 at Edwards Air Force Base in California:
Colonel John Stapp whose work would later save countless lives in
safer cars and airplanes and Captain Ed Murphy whose
contributions would lead to safer cockpit controls and foretell
the development of better computers and software.


Robin Ince uncovers their tangled tale which sprang from a series
of mishaps when what could go wrong did go wrong, risking life
and limb for the rider, and how, ironically, the origin of
Murphy’s Law went unnoticed by Murphy himself.


But does this law simply tap into our tendency to dwell on the
negative and overlook the positive? Or are the rules of
probability - the mathematical likeliness that something will
occur - sufficient to support it? We hear how the mathematician
whose car’s clutch ceased to function 100km from home, at night
in the middle of a rainstorm with no phone and a flooded tool
kit, came up with the definitive equation to predict how often
things really do go wrong for no good reason.


Produced by Adrian Washbourne. First broadcast on Monday 17
August 2020.