Library Organization
RAND Corporation
American nonprofit research institution, founded 1948, that formalized systems analysis and incubated early computing, game theory, and packet-switching research.
RAND Corporation grew out of Project RAND, a 1945 partnership between the Douglas Aircraft Company and the U.S. Army Air Forces initiated by a conversation between General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold and Douglas executive Franklin R. Collbohm, and was incorporated as an independent nonprofit in 1948. Built around systems analysis as its core methodology, RAND became a major postwar center for game theory and nuclear strategy (Herman Kahn’s scenario planning), computing (consultant John von Neumann, the JOHNNIAC computer co-designed by Willis Ware), and Paul Baran’s early-1960s work on packet switching, later foundational to the ARPANET.