Isaac Schoenberg developed spline theory as a WWII Army mathematician at the Ballistic Research Laboratory — the same lab that built ENIAC — not in actuarial work

A popular framing ties B-splines to actuarial graduation — the smoothing of mortality tables that founded life-assurance mathematics (compare claim-dodson-built-age-scaled-premiums-founding-equitable-life) — on the grounds that Isaac Schoenberg's 1946 papers used the word "graduation." Whether those papers actually lean on the actuarial sense of the term, or whether that is a later gloss, is unresolved: [unverified-quant/mechanism — needs primary], resting only on a Tier 3 design-history account. The specific verification is routed in question-verify-schoenberg-1946-graduation-actuarial-term.

The institutional origin, however, is documented. Per MacTutor: "During the years 1943–45 he was released from the University of Pennsylvania for war work as a mathematician at the Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory in Aberdeen, Maryland (the Aberdeen Proving Ground). It was during this war work that he initiated the area for which he is most famous, the theory of splines." Spline theory was born in an artillery-mathematics lab, not an insurance office.

The same lab is the institutional birthplace of general-purpose computing. Per the US Army's own ENIAC history (https://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/comphist/eniac-story.html, Tier 2): "The world's first electronic digital computer was developed by Army Ordnance to compute World War II ballistic firing tables," a responsibility "carried out at the Ballistic Research Laboratory of the Ordnance Department at Aberdeen." ENIAC — built to replace human ballistics "computers" — was moved to BRL Aberdeen in 1947 and operated there until 1955.

So the curve math under digital typography (claim-spline-was-a-shipbuilders-lofting-tool-before-a-math-object, claim-bezier-de-casteljau-independent-invention-secrecy-named-the-curve) and the literal birthplace of the electronic computer share an address. This note also belongs to the vault's running thread of corrected origin myths (compare claim-ann-hardy-tymshare-os-miscredited-to-husband).