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.



- Cultural Resources – archaeology and historic buildings
- Exceptional service – President Truman’s May 13, 1949 letter
- Fun Facts
- Government owned/contractor operated (GOCO) heritage
- 70 ways Sandia has changed the nation
- Where in Time? (find the answers in the history timeline)
- Thinking about Oppenheimer
- Contracting in the National Interest (PDF/2 MB)
- Fact Sheet: A History of Exceptional Service in the National Interest (PDF/3 MB)
- A History of Building 828, Sandia National Laboratories (PDF/4 MB)
- Origins: The Early History of Sandia National Laboratories (PPT/8 MB)
- Origins of a New Site: The Early History of Sandia California (PPT/13 MB)
- Pulsed Power at Sandia National Laboratories: The First 40 Years (PDF/8 MB)
- Sandia National Laboratories: A History of Exceptional Service in the National Interest (PDF/59 MB)
- Sandia National Laboratories: A Product of Postwar Readiness: 1945-1950 (PDF/18 MB)
- Sandia and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant 1974-1999 (PDF/12 MB)
- Tech Area II: A History (PDF/8 MB)
- The Works of Willis Whitfield (PDF/9 MB)
For more information, contact the Sandia Historian Rebecca Ullrich.