Video Excerpt

GEORGE
I can tell you how I became the father of linear programming. In the very early days, I was invited to Japan. When I came off the plane, the people who were my hosts kept looking for me because they could not find me. They had envisioned the one who originated linear programming would be an old man... At this stage, I was still very young! So that's the way I became the father of linear programming.

IRV
What is the origin of the word programming? Is it a word used a lot by the military? Does it have a different meaning than programming a computer?

GEORGE
It is a word used by the military for a plan, a schedule, or in general for a program of actions. This is exactly what it means for computers: a program of actions for the computer to execute.

IRV
Because of the wide use of computers and computer programming, people don't understand that we are talking about a different kind of programming when we speak of mathematical programming.

GEORGE
That's right, the word programming was used in linear programming. Linear programming was in vogue before programming in computers. Before, they called it coding, coding for the computers. The list of instructions to be executed by a computer was first called a "code". The military refer to their plans as "programs".

IRV
How would you describe a linear program?

GEORGE
Mathematically a linear program is a system of linear inequalities, plus a linear form to be optimized.

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