In 2011, the commercial CFD market was around $650M/yr worldwide, having grown at a remarkable average rate of about 13% year-on-year since 2000. Many factors had fed into this impressive growth rate and this paper by Drs.Keith Hanna and John Parry, first published in 2011 at the NAFEMS World Congress in Boston, discusses all of them in a historical context, and with particular reference to the commercial CFD industry.