Harry Diamond Laboratories

The Harry Diamond Laboratories (HDL) was a research facility under the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) and later the U.S. Army. It conducted research and development in electronic components and devices and was at one point the largest electronics research and development laboratory in the U.S. Army. HDL also acted as the Army's lead laboratory in nuclear survivability studies and operated the Aurora Pulsed Radiation Simulator, the world's largest full-threat gamma radiation simulator. In 1992, HDL was disestablished, and its mission, personnel, and facilities were incorporated into the newly created U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL). As part of this transition, the Army designated the HDL building as the site of ARL's new headquarters.

The installation was named in honor of pioneer radio engineer and inventor Harry Diamond, who led the Ordnance Development Division during World War II. Diamond contributed greatly to the fundamental concept and design of proximity fuzes.

History

Under the National Bureau of Standards

The origins of the Harry Diamond Laboratories trace back to the development of the radio proximity fuze at the National Bureau of Standards (NBS). During the 1930s, British military researchers investigated the feasibility of a proximity fuze, a device that would detonate an explosive charge only when it approached the immediate vicinity of its target. At the time, conventional artillery and antiaircraft shells very rarely hit their target, especially a moving one, because their detonation either required direct contact or relied on accurate predictions with an altimeter or a timer set at launch.

In 1939, British researchers William Butement, Edward Shire, and Amherst Thomson at the Air Defense Experimental Establishment conceived of a proximity fuze that used radio waves to sense the proximity of the target.