March 13, 2006
APL's First Home
From this...
APL's first "home" in 1942 was a Silver Spring, MD, building commandeered by the U.S. Navy and turned into a defense laboratory, Johns Hopkins University‘s Applied Physics Lab.
To this...
And it's not even the latest picture. We've changed even more since this aerial shot from 2000. We've added more staff and facilities to meet our sponsors' needs.
64 years of dedicated service to the nation
1954: Demands for expertise in guided missile technology kept APL in business after the end of World War II. The University purchased a farm in then-rural Howard County, about 20 miles to the north. Laboratory personnel began to move out of Silver Spring after the completion and dedication of Building 1 in 1954. Directly behind the new building are metal Navy structures. One of them, Building 14, remains in use today.
1962: Eight years later, several new buildings had been added. One, "out back" along a dirt road, would become a platform for Navy radar development and testing.
1973: Continuing to grow in all directions, APL added Buildings 6 and 7, a satellite tracking station, a pond, and more parking. By 1976, all programs and staff were in place at the Howard County campus. A local newspaper article noted the closure of the Lab's Silver Spring operations in 1976:
