Dahlgren was established in spring 1918 as a Naval Proving Ground. Its recorded first work, the firing of a
/45 caliber tractor-mounted gun, occurred on 16 October 1918, which is recognized as the official founding date. The proving ground was named to honor Rear Admiral
John Adolphus Dahlgren, a Civil War Navy commander and the "father of modern naval ordnance." Before 1918, the Navy operated a proving ground at Indian Head, Maryland, but it became inadequate as advances in gun designs and ordnance made its range obsolete. During World War I, a range of was sought by the Navy to prove its new battleship guns. The range was required to be over water but inside the territorial waters of the United States. The area from Machodoc Creek to Point Lookout on the Potomac River was selected because of its straight lines, accessibility, lack of rapids, and generally ice-free climate. At the time of Dahlgren's establishment, the area was extremely remote and relatively unpopulated. Thus, to recruit and retain the highly specialized work force required, the Navy promised to supply housing, food and medical services, schools, recreation, and other socially needed infrastructure. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dahlgren mainly proofed and tested every major gun in the Navy's arsenal, mostly at the Main Range Gun Line on the Potomac River. Dahlgren also helped test bombsights, including the
Norden bombsight, for the Navy's fledgling air forces. During World War II, Dahlgren became involved with new computational devices (computers) because of its ordnance requirements. Ground-breaking early computers were sent to Dahlgren to help with ballistic work and other directives, including the
Aiken Relay Calculator and the
Naval Ordnance Research Calculator (NORC). The computer and ordnance work attracted brilliant young scientists and engineers to the area, and some were tapped to help with the
Manhattan Project development of the atomic bomb. Two of them were Dr.
Norris E. Bradbury, later the director of the
Los Alamos National Laboratory, and
Deak Parsons, the weaponeer on the
Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the
Little Boy atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. In the years after the war, Dahlgren's work force was cut back. But the laboratory's strong computer and ordnance expertise kept the base open and Navy work flowing. The onset of the Cold War and the Korean War renewed demand for new offensive and defensive ship systems. In 1958, with the Soviet Union's launching of Sputnik I, a space race began. Dahlgren opened its gates that year to its first tenant activity, the Naval Space Surveillance Center, which selected Dahlgren to be at the center of the laboratory's growing computer advances. It was around this time that Dahlgren became heavily involved with the development of
Fleet Ballistic Missiles, later called Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles. In the 1970s and 1980s, Dahlgren was on the leading edge of naval surface weapons work with programs such as the
Tomahawk missile, which improved the Navy's capacity to perform attacks on land targets from a distance that decreased the risk to ships. Dahlgren also was critical in work to protect Navy ships from enemy missile and air attacks with programs such as the Standard missile and the
Aegis Combat System. That work continues as of 2017, along with the
electromagnetic railgun,
DDG 1000,
Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), and
Chemical Biological and Radiological Defense. Because of the laboratory's broad-based growth in research and development and with its new missions, Dahlgren's name officially changed to the Naval Weapons Laboratory in 1959. It was later changed to the Naval Surface Weapons Center in 1974 with the merger of the former Naval Ordnance Laboratory at White Oak, Maryland. In 1987, the name was changed again to the Naval Surface Warfare Center as new and expanded missions were added. And, in 1992, with the consolidations of naval laboratories into one headquarters center, it became the Dahlgren Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center. ==Research and development==