The Operations Research Office (ORO) was a civilian military research center founded in 1948 by the
United States Army. It was run under contract by
Johns Hopkins University and is regarded as one of the founding institutes of
operations research as an interdisciplinary science.
The organization's offices were originally at
Fort McNair
Fort Lesley J. McNair is a United States Army post located on the tip of Greenleaf Point, the peninsula that lies at the confluence of the Potomac River and the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. To the peninsula's west is the Washington C ...
,
Washington, D.C. They moved to
Chevy Chase, Maryland
Chevy Chase () is the name of both a town and an unincorporated census-designated place (Chevy Chase (CDP), Maryland) that straddle the northwest border of Washington, D.C. and Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. Several settlements in th ...
in 1952. In 1961, the Army discontinued Johns Hopkins University's contract, and the ORO was dissolved. Soon after, the
Research Analysis Corporation
Research is "creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness t ...
(RAC) was founded, which assumed the ORO's projects and most of its employees. The RAC was funded by the Army until June 1972.
References
Military-related organizations
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