Ballistic Research Laboratory

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The United States Army Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland was the center for the army's research efforts in interior, exterior, and terminal ballistics and vulnerability/lethality analysis. Among its missions was the creation of firing tables for artillery and mortars, the problem for which BRL sponsored the development of ENIAC, widely regarded as the first general-purpose electronic digital computer. BRL engineers developed and built several generations of computers until commercial industry became capable of meeting their requirements. The last of the line was "BRLESC", the Ballistics Research Laboratory Electronic Scientific Computer. BRLESC and its predecessor, ORDVAC, used their own unique notation for hexadecimal numbers. Instead of the sequence A B C D E F universally used today, the digits ten to fifteen were represented by the letters K S N J F L, corresponding to the teletype characters on 5-track paper tape.

Another product from BRL is BRL-CAD, a solid geometric modeling system developed to support engineering analyses in vehicle ballistic vulnerability, signatures, and similar applications.

In 1992, BRL was disestablished as its mission, personnel, and facilities were incorporated into the newly created Army Research Laboratory.