The laboratory was founded as the University of California Radiation Laboratory in 1931 by Ernest Orlando Lawrence, a University of California Berkeley physicist who won the 1939 Nobel Prize in physics for his invention of the cyclotron, a circular particle accelerator that opened the door to high-energy physics. It is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory, operated by the University of California. The name of the laboratory has evolved since its founding: Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (1931-1958), the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (1959-1995), and currently the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1995-present).

The chamber was designed by the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Mechanical Engineering Department, under supervision of Paul Hernandez. Design studies for the 72-inch chamber had started early in 1955, and the instrument was completed 65 man-years later, at a cost of $2 million. In a bubble chamber, particles blasted out of a nucleus cleave through this superheated sea like tiny torpedoes, leaving in their wake tiny trails of bubbles that can be photographed. Analysis of a particle's bubble chamber tracks can tell physicists much about the particle's physical properties and history.