My dad, a chemical & electrical engineer, claimed to have coined that phrase. Since he is now deceased I can’t ask him what year he coined it. It does seem like a phrase that could be co-coined (is that a word). However, he did testify in a lot of investigative engineering & legal cases and before legislatures as an expert witness. Everything from electronics, explosions & building failures. Some pretty big cases all over the US. came in contact with a lot of engineers who received the benifit of his humor.
Dad was shown one of the first transistors when the CIA was trying to recruit him. I didn’t think to ask him if that was before or after Roswell:)
No, Im not Fred
My friend “Fred” was a senior research physicist at Johns Hopkins. When I met him he had made some money in Real Estate and kind of dropped out back in NM.
Very bright guy.
It is possible he met your father at some point in time.
I met Fred in the early to mid 1980’s. He was a Ham friend.
>> “Murphy was an optimist” <<
I had a friend that used to say it, it was back in 1957, I was 13 years old at the time we met. He was a physicist, and a registered electrical engineer, working for Applied Radiation Corp. His name was Norris Kenton Fields, and was known simply as “Fields.”
He was a brilliant but kooky man, and I learned alot from him.