There are many reasons why working in Philly tech is inherently cool, but one of our favorites is that the city is the birthplace of the world’s very first all-electronic, programmable computer — the ENIAC, which was first made public in Philadelphia on Friday, Feb. 15, 1946.

The ENIAC, aka the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, was the first computer built to take full advantage of electronic processing speeds and to “think” for itself using conditional branching and nested subroutines. Called a “giant brain” in press coverage at the time, the actual machine belongs to the Smithsonian. But a good piece of it resides at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School Building, where the university’s department of engineering is housed.

And although its anniversary comes right after Valentine’s Day next week, Penn faculty and Jim Scherrer from the Compuseum have planned an array of virtual events starting Thursday, Feb. 11, to celebrate the computer’s last 75 years.

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