February 14 — is an unofficial but widely celebrated in the professional world of Computer Day. On February 14, 1946, the first really working electronic computer ENIAC I ( Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator ) was demonstrated to the scientific world and to all interested.
Interestingly, the work on the development of the first computer was sponsored by the American army, which needed a computer to carry out military calculations, planning and programming. ENIAC I worked until 23 hours 45 minutes on October 2, 1955, and then was dismantled.
Of course, there were earlier computers, but these are all prototypes and experimental options. For that matter, the first computer was Babbage's analytical machine at all... But ENIAC was the first computer really working on practical tasks. By the way, it was from ENIAC that modern computers inherited a binary number system.
ENIAC was designed to solve one of the serious and necessary tasks of that time: to count the army's ballistic tables. The army had departments involved in the calculation of ballistic tables for the needs of artillery and aviation. People worked in these departments as Army Calculator.
Naturally, the power and productivity of these « computing resources » army was not enough. Therefore, cybernetics in early 1943 began to develop the concept of a new computer device — of the ENIAC computer.
That is why February 14 is the celebration of — Computer Day. And in Russia there is also an official professional holiday for workers in this industry — Programmer's Day.