The former Chief of the ARL Special Projects Office, Dr. Ed Brown, reflects on the history of the laboratory, its purpose, and one of his contributions to the organization: Ask Dr. Ed.
The nation's premier laboratory for land forces
The Ballistics Research Laboratory, a predecessor organization to ARL, invented and developed the first multipurpose, electronic, programmable computer in conjunction with the University of Pennsylvania Moore School of Engineering. The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator) was developed at the end of WWII originally to speed the calculation of artillery firing tables, but it became the progenitor of all the computers that we use today, from mainframes to laptops.
The nation's premier laboratory for land forces