Ballistic Research Laboratory

The Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland was the center for the United States Army's research efforts in ballistics and vulnerability/lethality analysis.

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

Computers

BRL played an important role in the history of computer development:^[1]^[2]

Sponsored the development of ENIAC - widely regarded as the first general-purpose electronic digital computer - to aid the creation of firing tables for artillery and mortars
Developed and built several generations of computers: EDVAC, ORDVAC and BRLESC^[3]
Developed BRL-CAD, a solid geometric modeling system - now open sourced
The network ping utility was authored by Mike Muuss of BRL in December 1983 to troubleshoot network problems^[4]^[5]

^ "ARL Computing History"
^ "The History of Computing at BRL", [Mike Muuss]
^ ORDVAC and BRLESC 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
^ Mike Muuss. "The Story of the PING Program". Adelphi, MD, USA: U.S. Army Research Laboratory. Archived from the original on 08 September 2010. http://www.webcitation.org/5saCKBpgH. Retrieved 08 September 2010. "I named it after the sound that a sonar makes, inspired by the whole principle of echo-location."
^ Salus, Peter (1994). A Quarter Century of UNIX. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0201547775.