RAND Corporation
More info
- Released
- 1948
- Type
- Nonprofit think tank
The US Air Force's Santa Monica think tank, where packet switching was dreamed up to survive a nuclear war.
It began as Project RAND inside Douglas Aircraft after the Second World War and became an independent nonprofit in 1948. The name is short for Research ANd Development. The brief was strategy for the Air Force, but computing history got a lot thrown in for free.
In 1964 Paul Baran published On Distributed Communications, describing a network where messages are cut into blocks that take different routes – the groundwork for packet switching. RAND also built the JOHNNIAC computer, the JOSS time-sharing language and the RAND Tablet. In 1955 it published A Million Random Digits, a book of random numbers whose reader reviews are still worth a look.