On Mar. 1, 1953, the University of California Radiation Laboratory, now known as the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) acquired the Univac-1, and soon after the IBM 701ﾗthe beginning of the Laboratory’s not-so-coincidental links to commercial supercomputingﾗtheir nearly identical birth dates, efforts to develop the fastest and most powerful machines, and use of machines to solve large, complex problems.

The LLNL was founded in 1952 as part of the UC Berkeley Radiation Laboratory on the one-square-mile site of a World War II naval air training station. In 1958, after the death of E. O. Lawrence, the Livermore Lab was renamed Lawrence Radiation Laboratory.