MathWorks
company
The MathWorks, Inc. is an American privately held corporation that specializes in mathematical computing software. Its major products include MATLAB and Simulink, which support data analysis and simulation.
History
MATLAB (MATrix LABoratory) was created in the 1970s by Cleve Moler, who was chairman of the computer science department at the University of New Mexico at the time. It was a free tool for academics. Jack Little, who would eventually set up the company, came across the tool while he was a graduate student in electrical engineering at Stanford University.
Little and Steve Bangert rewrote the code for MATLAB in C while they were colleagues at an engineering firm. They founded MathWorks along with Moler in 1984, with Little running it out of his house in Portola Valley, California. Little would mail diskettes in baggies (food storage bags) to the first customers. The company sold its first order, 10 copies of MATLAB, for $500 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in February 1985.
The public source identifies “MathWorks” as company. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around MathWorks and company.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “MathWorks”, the useful work is to connect “company” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1518683. VIAF identifies the subject as 129289927. The Library of Congress control number is no91030279. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1984 and 1985.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “MathWorks”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow MathWorks primary sources, MathWorks archive and MathWorks research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “MathWorks”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “MathWorks” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.