The Quine–McCluskey algorithm (QMC), also known as the method of prime implicants, is a method used for minimization of Boolean functions that was developed by Willard V. Quine in 1952 and extended by Edward J. McCluskey in 1956. As a general principle this approach had already been demonstrated by the logician Hugh McColl in 1878, was proved by Archie Blake in 1937, and was rediscovered by Edward W. Samson and Burton E. Mills in 1954 and by Raymond J. Nelson in 1955. Also in 1955, Paul W. Abrahams and John G. Nordahl as well as Albert A. Mullin and Wayne G. Kellner proposed a decimal variant of the method.