With roots in the Manhattan project, the Department of Energy (then called the Atomic Energy Commisssion) was active in the 1940's and 1950's in getting early computers to work. DOE was committed to the development and advancement of computing capabilities in order to tackle problems of critical interest to the nation. After all, before digital computers were available to the labs, "computer" was a job title. Parallel computing was done by rows and columns of mathematicians. The size and type of problems that could be solved in this manner were limited.