New Website Offers An In-Depth Look At Laboratory History

LIVERMORE, Calif. — What was happening at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory during the 1960s, the ’70s or even the ’80s? What was the site like when the place opened its doors back in 1952? All of these answers can be found on a special new Website that becomes available to the public today.

In honor of the Lab’s 50th anniversary, a comprehensive timeline featuring facts from the day the Lab first opened up to the present is now posted on the Web. The timeline can be viewed at: http://www.llnl.gov/timeline .

Click in and you will find a multitude of information about the Lab arranged by decade, beginning with the 1950s. For each decade, there are pictures and short summaries of the Lab’s top news, with links to longer articles for each item, and short overviews of the Lab leadership, organization and number of employees. There are also highlights of world events for each year.

For example, in the 1970s, the link to 1971 includes such world events as the Apollo 15 moon landing and the Soviet launch of a primitive space station into the Earth's orbit. In the same year, Lawrence Radiation Lab became a separate organization from the UC Berkeley Radiation Lab and the quest for fusion power was the goal of LLNL experiments with Baseball II, a large superconducting magnet shaped like the seams of a baseball.

Click on the 1980s and you will read Lab highlights that include ARAC's tracking of radiation dispersion from Chernobyl, the MFE magnet and the Nova laser.

"Browsing through the Lab's historical timeline will vividly reveal the immense breadth of accomplishments of this Lab and the fact that the Lab will continue to make history and make a difference," said Roger Cunning, a Lab employee who spearheaded the timeline.

The Website also features links to an overview of the Lab's history, QuickTime movies about the Lab, such as one on the 1950s page called "Birth of the Laboratory," and graphs for each decade showing how the Lab's employee population changed.

Founded in 1952, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a national nuclear security laboratory, with a mission to ensure national security and apply science and technology to the important issues of our time. The National Nuclear Security Administration's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is managed by the University of California.

Laboratory news releases and photos are also available electronically on the World Wide Web of the Internet at URL http://www.llnl.gov/PAO and on UC Newswire.