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Ed Link's Pilot Maker
Pilot Ed Link received a patent for his new pilot trainer on April 14, 1929, a closer-loop simulation device that would later be perfected and go on to be used for training new recruits of the U.S. Airforce. This machine was the first recorded simulation device in history. -
World War II
The global war between the Allied and Axis powers inspired heavy research and funding into advanced technology, computer, and simulation development that would lay the foundation for many of the industry's important inventions. Developlemt of the EINAC began as a direct result of WWII. -
Monte Carlo Method
(Jan 1 approximte date)
The Monte Carlo method, a system of complex computer algorithms useful in calculations that other mathematical procedures could not solve, was developed in the mid 1940s by Stanislaw Ulam while he was working on nuclear weapons projects at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Immediately after Ulam's breakthrough, mathmetician John von Neumann realized its importance and programmed the ENIAC computer to carry out Monte Carlo calculations. -
EINAC
The Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (EINAC) was introduced to the public in February of 1946 as the world's first electronic computer. Developed by John Presper Eckert Jr. and John W. Mauchly, the EINAC was designed to be used to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Lab, although it also was used in research of the feasability of the hydrogen bomb. -
Keith Douglas Tocher
(Jan 1 approximate date)
In 1960, Keith Douglas Tocher developed a general simulation program whose main task was to simulate the operation of a production plant where the machines ran in the following cycles: In use, On Standby, Not available and Fault. This work also led to the first book on simulation: The Art of Simulation (1963). -
GPSS
(Jan 1 approximate date)
In 1961 IMB released the General Purpose Simulation System (GPSS). The GPSS was designed to perform teleprocessing simulations, involving, for example: Urban traffic control, management of telephone calls, reservations of plane tickets, etc. The simplicity of use of this system made it popular as the most commonly used simulation language of the era. -
SIMSCRIPT
(Jan 1 approximate date)
SIMSCRIPT is a free-form general-purpose simulation language conceived by Harry Markowitz and Bernard Hausner at the RAND Corporation in 1963 to support an Air Force project in efficient preparation of simulation models. It was implemented as a Fortran preprocessor on the IBM 7090 and was designed for large discrete event simulations. SIMSCRIPT is still used in computer simulation today. -
First WInter SImulation Conference
In 1967, the WSC (Winter Simulation Conference) was founded to discuss and research various aspects of simulation and visualization. Records of simulation languages and derived applications are still filed there today. According to the WSC's website, "The Winter Simulation Conference features tracks devoted to leading-edge developments in modeling, simulation, and analysis methodology and to mature simulation studies and
lessons learned in a diversity of simulation application areas." -
SLAM II
(Jan 1 approximate date)
Alan Pritsker developed SLAM II in 1983, a simulation software that provided the network, discrete and continuous modeling approaches. This software was vitally important to the growth of the simulation field during the 80s. -
The Rise of the Computer
Throughout the 70s and early 80s, the field of simulation saw compartively less growth than in the previous three decades, due to the beliefs that simulation was too complicated and time consuming to be worth additional research. However, sudden commercial availability of a large number of computerized manufacturing systems as well as the explosion of computing applications in engineering design would make it easier and cheaper than ever before to continue developing simulation programs. -
Oculus Rift
The Oculus Rift, the first stereoscopic virtual reality headset designed for gaming had it's overwhelmingly successful Kickstarter campaign funded on January 13, 2013. The Rift attracted so much attention and positive demo kit reviews that the company was bought by Facebook in July of 2014 for over two billion dollars. The final version of the product has yet to be released to store shelves.
