The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : Historic Computer Has 50 Fuses to Blow Out Today

The task Vice President Al Gore will ask the world’s first all-electronic computer to do at its 50th anniversary celebration Wednesday is a no-brainer.

“It will count to 46 and count to 96, and that’s it,” said Gregory Farrington, dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, where the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, was developed.

ENIAC was unveiled to the public on Valentine’s Day in 1946, an event that came to be seen as the birth date of the modern computer era and is now being commemorated in a series of events sponsored by Penn and the Assn. for Computing, the first organization of computer scientists.

Kicking off Penn’s celebration will be the ceremonial restarting of ENIAC by Gore at a ceremony today.