Up to this point in history, optimization techniques were known for a very long time, from the simple methods employed by F.W.Harris to the more elaborate techniques of the calculus of variations developed by Euler in 1733 or the multipliers employed by Lagrange in 1811, and computers were slowly being developed, first as analog computers by Sir William Thomson (1872) and James Thomson (1876) moving to the eletromechanical computers of Konrad Zuse (1939 and 1941). During World War II however, the development of mathematical optimization went through a major boost with the development of the Colossus computer, the first electronic digital computer that was all programmable, and the possibility to computationally solve large linear programming problems, first by Kantorovich in 1939 working for the Soviet government and latter on in 1947 with the simplex method of Dantzig. These methods are known today as belonging to the field of operations research.