The Accident Is Uncontainable/The Accident Must Be Contained: High-Speed Cinematography and the Development of Scientific Crash Testing

The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control.

—Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology"¹

Prologue: Whatever Can Go Wrong

From 1947 to 1951, a series of groundbreaking experiments was conducted at Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert.² The objective of the military research project was to study the limits of human tolerance to rapid deceleration, as well as the strength of airplane seats and harnesses under simulated crash conditions. A rail-mounted, rocket-boosted sled with a high-powered hydromechanical braking system was employed to this end. United States Air Force officer and flight surgeon John Paul Stapp directed the audacious experiments, and he himself sometimes served as a test subject.³

After completing one such experiment in 1949, researchers discovered to their dismay that the electrical sensors affixed to Stapp's safety harness had failed. Instead of a positive numerical value, each sensor yielded a zero reading. Perplexed, the team of experimenters attempted to ascertain the cause of the failure. Why did the instruments malfunction? What went wrong? It was soon learned that the sensors had been installed improperly—backwards, in fact. Upon learning of the mishap, Captain Edward A. Murphy Jr., one of the test technicians, quipped in frustration, "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong." Thus was born "Murphy's Law."⁴

While not as widely known as the adage itself, the Murphy's Law origin story has, over the decades, become something of a minor legend. As with all legends, the story circulates in many "true" versions. Was Stapp the one who rode the rocket sled, or was the test subject actually a chimpanzee? How many sensors were involved—four? six? sixteen? Were they affixed to Stapp's harness or to his body? Were they mounted incorrectly, or were they defective from the outset? Was Murphy at fault, or was another technician to blame? Did Murphy coin the expression on the spot, or did Stapp do so days later at a press conference? And how, exactly, was the expression worded? Each of the following phrasings has been claimed as accurate: "If there's any way they [the team of technicians] can do it wrong, they will." "If anything can go wrong, it will." "If anything can go wrong, he [Murphy] will do it." "If it can happen, it will."⁵ "If that guy [Murphy's assistant] has any way of making a mistake, he will." "If there's more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then somebody will do it that way." "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong."

Which, if any, version of the origin story is historically true, and which, if any, variant of the adage is historically accurate, are less important for present purposes than the cultural perceptions they collectively articulate. Murphy's Law makes a popular truism out of a pessimistic fatalism, extracts a nugget of folk wisdom from a philosophy of despair. It presumes the failure of every endeavor and, in a sense, predicts the worst of all possible worlds (and does so with a hint of perverse delight). It insists that, in the future, mistakes, misfortunes, and other inauspicious outcomes are not only probable but, indeed, unavoidable. It says the best-laid plans of mice and men always go astray.

More intriguing is the singular way in which Murphy's Law evinces a certain attitude toward modern technology. Interpreted in the light of its origin story, with its faulty sensors and frustrated scientists, the adage expresses not so much a sweeping cosmological pessimism as a narrowly technological one. "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong" translates as "However technology can fail, it will fail." To be sure, the mythology surrounding Murphy's Law reads as a contemporary parable of technological excess and accident, a cautionary tale about the irreducible complexity of "man-machine" relations and the unruly contingencies that vex—and seem to hex—them.

Even this...