Simulmatics Corporation
| Founded | February 18, 1959 in New York City, USA |
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The Simulmatics Corporation was a private U.S. data science firm that used computation to conduct large scale behavior analysis. The corporation was founded in 1959 by Ed Greenfield, an advertising agent on Madison Avenue, and ceased operation in 1970, after a series of bad publicity and financial troubles led to its ultimate collapse. The Simulmatics Corporation provided large scale political data analysis to clients, most notably in the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy, propaganda and psychological warfare in Vietnam, and as part of the Kerner Commission, an investigation into the causes of nationwide racial unrest in the summer of 1967.
Inspired by the growing use of computer simulation and prediction, particularly in the 1952 presidential election, the Simulmatics Corporation was founded on the premise of providing consulting services based on large scale social and behavioral data analysis using computer models. Their programs were run on IBM 704 computers and used the FORTRAN language. The word "simulmatics" is a combination of the words "simulation" and "automatic".
Notable employees and affiliates of the corporation include Ithiel de Sola Pool, and Alex Bernstein, a computer chess pioneer and attendee of the 1956 Dartmouth workshop.