Society member Stephen Goranson has found a version of the law, not yet generalized or bearing that name, in a report by Alfred Holt at an 1877 meeting of an engineering society. "The first experiment already illustrates a truth of the theory, well confirmed by practice, what-ever can happen will happen if we make trials enough." In later publications "whatever can happen will happen" occasionally is termed "Murphy's law", which raises the possibility-if something went wrong-that "Murphy" is "De Morgan" misremembered (an option, among others, raised by Goranson on the American Dialect Society list). Mathematician Augustus De Morgan wrote on June 23, 1866: Recent significant research in this area has been conducted by members of the American Dialect Society. The perceived perversity of the universe has long been a subject of comment, and precursors to the modern version of Murphy's law are abundant.
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