Origins of gremlin and Murphy's laws

Aircraft technology and the lore of aerial navigation.

Gremlin
an imaginary gnome like creature, mischief maker, to whom is attributed mechanical problems, especially in aircraft. (Perhaps Irish : Gruaimin, bad tempered little guy, gruaim (gloom)

p. 609

rola.

Murphy’s Law
“ Anything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong.”

p. 916

The American Heritage College dictionary, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002).

“if anything can go wrong it will” popular restatement

If there is a system designed for human use the weakest link is the unskilled or unfamiliar user of the hardware.
(actual statement about aircraft design flaws)

Natural History Magazine (N.D. n.p.)

Pilot


is actually a term applied to ships originally it referred to someone who took over from the captain as a ship approached a harbor, where the expertise of the pilot in navigating in confined spaces and with crowded ships outclassed the ability of the ships' captains.

New descriptions of motion in three dimensional space.

Pitch, the movement, or oscillation of a ship, aircraft, or vehicle around a horizontal axis perpendicular to the direction of motion.


Yaw, the twisting movement (of a moving ship or aircraft), to roll or to oscillate about a vertical axis: [ for example], the jet yawed sharply to the right. As a noun: a rotation, twisting, or oscillation of a moving ship or aircraft around a vertical axis.

New technologies?

modern tools

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