The connection between LP and digital computers (Score 5, Informative)

Linear programming was among the first "real" applications of digital computers. I saw Dantzig give a talk about it at an INFORMS conference back in the 1980s.

It seems that in a visit to Von Neumann in 1947 he described LP and the simplex method a bit. (See http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/i7802.ht ml.) It seems that Von Neumann understood everything pretty much immediately, and even derived the dual solution to LP in the first sitting.

I suppose we all know what Von Neumann did next ...