Ballistic Research Laboratory
More info
- Owner
- US Army, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland
- Released
- 1938–1992
- Type
- Military research laboratory
- Known for
- Commissioned ENIAC, EDVAC, ORDVAC and BRLESC
The US Army's computing laboratory in Maryland, which ordered most of the early American computers for one reason: the firing tables never caught up with the guns.
BRL was set up at Aberdeen Proving Ground in 1938 with a single dominating task — computing the trajectories that became firing tables. Every new combination of gun and shell needed thousands of trajectories, and each trajectory was a numerical integration that took a person with a desk calculator a working day or more. The lab employed hundreds of people doing exactly that, plus time on the differential analyzer at the Moore School. During the Second World War the queue still grew faster than it could be worked down.
The answer was to commission machines. The ENIAC contract was signed in June 1943, with Lieutenant Herman Goldstine as the Army's liaison in Philadelphia. ENIAC moved to Aberdeen in 1947 and ran there until October 1955. EDVAC, ORDVAC and eventually the in-house BRLESC followed. Through the 1950s and 60s the lab also published the recurring surveys of every American computing system in service — an era when you could still fit them all in one report. BRL was absorbed into the Army Research Laboratory in 1992.