History

Our history reflects the changing national security needs of postwar America. Although Sandia originated as a single-mission engineering organization for nonnuclear components of nuclear weapons, today it is a multiprogram laboratory engaging in research supporting a broad spectrum of national security issues.

Sandia began in 1945 as Z Division, the ordnance design, testing, and assembly arm of Los Alamos National Laboratory. It became Sandia Laboratory in 1948 and, in 1949, Sandia Corporation was established as a Western Electric company to manage the laboratory. A second site was opened in California’s Livermore Valley in 1956. More than two decades later, in 1979, Congress made Sandia a Department of Energy national laboratory. Sandia Corporation became a wholly owned subsidiary of Martin Marietta (later Lockheed Martin Corporation) in 1993. On May 1, 2017, National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., assumed management of Sandia.