PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – A US Navy engineering group based at the former Navy Yard in South Philadelphia is celebrating its 100th anniversary, and hundreds of invited guests gathered there on Thursday to mark the occasion.

The Navy Ship Systems Engineering Station (NavSSES) was founded by Rear Admiral George W. Melville in 1910.

With the exception of combat systems, NavSSES is responsible for every system on US Navy ships.

Patricia Woody (right) is head of the Machinery Research and Engineering Department.

“Our work is primarily the propulsion systems, the electric power systems, the machinery control systems,” she explained on Thursday in Building 77H at the Navy Yard.

Her team of engineers not only develops the systems, she says, but they train sailors and officers how to run and maintain them.

And even as the Navy gathered on Thursday to celebrate the past — which included NavSSES’s contribution to the Manhatten Project — Woody said her team has their eye on the future.

“We have different systems that will really use alternative fuels — systems that will actually run our gas turbines because they actually use a lot of fuel,” she said.

Reported by Michelle Durham, KYW Newsradio 1060.