Intelligence, innovation and integrity— KD Tocher and the dawn of simulation

Abstract

It is now some 50 years since the advent of discrete-event simulation in the form of the development of the General Simulation Program (GSP) by KD Tocher and his team. The paper considers this innovative step in the context of the earlier history of operational research (OR), simulation and computing hardware and software, for example, being before the emergence of high-level languages. The paper discusses the industrial stimulus for the GSP idea and the pioneering path followed. That GSP work opened the way to a tool that has grown in popularity steadily over time to be now recognized as the most frequently used of the classical OR techniques.

Keywords:

• simulation
• discrete-event simulation
• simulation software
• history of OR
• computing

Acknowledgements

This paper was first presented on 1 April 2008 at SW08, the Fourth OR Society Workshop on Simulation held in Redditch, Worcs, UK. Figure 2 is a US Army photo c. 1947–1955, photographer unknown; ‘the image is a work of a US Army soldier or employee, taken or made during the course of the person's official duties and, as a work of the US federal government, the image is in the public domain’. Figure 3 is used courtesy of Dr David Tocher. Figures 4 and 7, 8, 9, 10 and11 are used by past permission of the British Steel Corporation. It would also be appropriate here to acknowledge the contribution of the many staff who assisted Toch in the design and development of GSP, such as Gil Bowling, Brian Nabb, Peter Amiry and Peter Mellor.