[3] 80% of the Point Loma Military Reservation evolved into the Naval Electronics Laboratory Center (NELC) at the end of World War II.

The ground plane under the arch simulates the electrical characteristics of the ocean, allowing research on the properties of shipboard antennas to be carried out.

[6] World headlines came early in this program from several events—the submerged voyage of USS Nautilus from the Pacific to the Atlantic, via the North Pole, in 1958, with NEL’s Dr. Waldo Lyon aboard as chief scientist and ice pilot.

That same summer, the USS Skate cruised from the Atlantic to the North Pole and the central Arctic Ocean, surfacing 9 times through small holes in the ice cap.

[8][9] NEL also plunged into the undersea environment, acquiring the Bathyscaphe Trieste and directing its 1960 dive over 35,000 feet (10.7 km) down into the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench near Guam.

In response, the lab developed the Message Processing and Distribution System (MPDS), installing it aboard the Seventh Fleet flagship USS Oklahoma City a month ahead of schedule.

NELIAC was the brainchild of Harry Huskey, at the time Chairman of the Association for Computing Machinery, who had suggested porting applications in a machine-independent form.