It was urged on by the need to solve complicated decision problems where the optimal deployment of military and civilian resources had to be determined. The availability of electronic computers also played an important role. The principal computational scheme for the solution of linear optimization problems, the simplex algorithm, was established by Dantzig about 1950. In addi­ tion, the fundamental theorems on such problems were rapidly developed, based on earlier published results on the properties of systems of linear inequalities.