The RAND (Research and Development) Corporation of Santa Monica, California, began as a United States Air Force Project in 1945 under contract to the Douglas Aircraft Company. Its broadly defined function was to study American national security and in particular the role of airpower in that context. Three years later the Ford Foundation endowed RAND as a private, nonprofit research corporation "to further and promoted scientific, educational and charitable purposes" to the nation's general benefit. As one of the first American "think tanks," however, its staff focused primarily on military and strategic issues funded by the U.S. government. Curator Joseph Tatarewicz, historian Martin Collins, and curator Paul Ceruzzi of the National Air and Space Museum conducted the eight interviews with three RAND moderators and twenty-two participants to document the unique role RAND played after 1945 in the military-industrial complex. In the first three sessions Tatarewicz and Collins interviewed three men who discussed the aerial reconnaissance technology RAND developed for the Air Force. In the fourth session Collins and RAND vice president Gus Shubert interviewed six former division heads who discussed the changing intellectual culture of the Corporation as it related to strategic policy development. In the last four sessions Paul Ceruzzi and RAND staff researchers Robert Anderson and Willis Ware interviewed thirteen men who helped pioneer computer development at RAND between 1945 and the late 1960s. Most of the sessions featured diagrams, photographs, and various artifacts to complement the discussion.
