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MIT Lincoln Laboratory, also known as Lincoln Lab, is a federally funded research and development center managed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and primarily funded by the United States Department of Defense. Lincoln Lab is located at Hanscom Field in the town of Lexington, Massachusetts, and was founded in 1951. In 1950, MIT undertook a summer study, named Project Charles, to explore the feasibility of establishing a major laboratory focused on air defense. The summer study recommended the establishment of a laboratory, named Project Lincoln, (later renamed Lincoln Laboratory) to be operated by MIT for the Army, Navy and Air Force. In the early years, the most important developments to come out of Lincoln Lab were SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment), a nationwide network of radar and anti-aircraft weapons linked to digital computers conceived by professor George E. Valley, and the DEW Line (Distant Early Warning Line), a radar surveillance system placed along the polar gateway to the United States. A feature of the relationship between Lincoln Lab and MIT is that intellectual property generated at Lincoln is owned by MIT and managed by the MIT Technology Licensing Office (TLO). This affects the industrial or commercial practice of applications of research and development at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and the process of creating spin-off companies.
Name Lincoln Laboratory gets its name from Project Lincoln, which was named after the nearby town of Lincoln, Massachusetts. The name "Project Lincoln" was chosen because the Laboratory sits near the towns of Bedford, Lexington, and Lincoln, and the names "Project Lexington" and "Project Bedford" were already taken by other DOD efforts. | ||||||||
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