The Air Force launches Project RAND (Research And Development—although some jokingly call it Research And No Development). On May 2nd, it will produce its first report: “Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship,” essentially an artificial satellite. It also deals with Operations Research, particularly Linear Programming. And on May 14, 1948, Project RAND will become the RAND Corporation, an independent nonprofit organization with more than 200 employees. It will focus in particular on John Neumann’s three obsessions: computing, game theory, and the bomb. The RAND computer will sometimes be called JOHNNIAC (John von Neumann Numerical Integrator and Automatic Computer). Game theory at RAND will be applied to the attempt to avoid a nuclear war, or survive it, if it were unavoidable.
