In 1966 engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman founded Experiments in Art and Technology, a not-for-profit service organization whose goal was to promote collaborations between artists, engineers and scientists. The organization was created in September, during preparations for the performance series, 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering in October 1966, and sought to continue the artist/engineer relationship forged during those performances in the belief that collaboration between artists and scientists would greatly benefit society as a whole.