Naval Research Lab

The Naval Research Laboratory was established in 1923, after Thomas Edison suggested "a lab under civilians be established to develop new weapons". That was in 1915, when Europe faced World War I. This lab remained from the beginning under US Navy control. In 1935, ship radar was introduced by the NRL, and many countermeasures against torpedoes, mines and radar detection have been developed there. The NRL closely worked together with the research labs of Berkeley, Harvard, Stanford and the MIT.

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  1. http://www.nrl.navy.mil/
    The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is the Navy's corporate laboratory. NRL conducts a broadly-based multi disciplinary program of scientific research and advanced technological development directed toward maritime applications of new and improved materials, techniques, equipment, system, and ocean, atmospheric, and space sciences and related technologies

  2. http://www.nrl.navy.mil/heritage.htm
    "During WWII, scientific activities necessarily were concentrated almost entirely on applied research. New electronics equipment - radio, radar, sonar - was developed. Countermeasures were devised."

  3. http://estd-www.nrl.navy.mil/
    Welcome to the Naval Research Laboratory's Electronics Science & Technology Division. A multi-disciplinary research and exploratory development program is performed that spans a broad spectrum of work on electronic components of military importance.

  4. http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9807/Rath-9807.html
    "Since the end of World War II, the NRL has pioneered the development and production capabilities for thin, magnetic radar-absorbing materials (RAM), thicker non-magnetic RAM, and designs for radar anechoic chambers... In fact, the NRL has developed, produced, and in several instances installed materials on Navy/Department of Defense platforms from the end of World War II through Desert Storm."

  5. http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/transcripts/suits42.html

    6. McMahon: So you're moving between there-- or are you very often at the Radio and Research Laboratory?
    Suits: Well, I doubt if I was at my office in Schenectady on the average not more than one or two days a week. The other times I was in the New York office of Division 15, at the Radio and Research Laboratory, and in Washington. I was at the OSRD office frequently, and frequently at the offices of the armed services people concerned with countermeasures, including the Naval Research Laboratory. So I was on the run most of the time.
    McMahon: Besides the Naval Research Laboratory, what's the constellation of institutions that you remember Division 15 working with?
    Suits: Very early in the work the Airborne Instruments Laboratory became part of the act. And the Division had contract work underway at the Bell Telephone Laboratories.