We are getting back to the actual digital family tree. In 1937 George Stibitz built a tiny binary adding circuit on his kitchen table using scraps he "liberated" from his job at Bell Labs. In 1940 he demonstrated a machine he called a computer. That research forms one of the foundations of modern computing. It also forms a weird temporal phenomenon that I have yet to name. Maybe the Curse of '37?

Selected Sources:

Zeroth Generation by George Stibitz (NOW WITH A 2nd EDITION!)

http://www.bitsavers.org/magazines/Datamation/196704.pdf - Stibitz in Datamation

Hybrid computers are composed of a digital computer linked to an analog computer. That leads to an interesting challenge: how do you write software for one of these things? The analog side actively resists programming, while the digital side can't comprehend of continuous values. In the 1960s specialized languages appeared that tried to bridge this divide. And, I assure you, they are not at all like what you would expect.

In 1945 the first electronic digital computers sparked to life. Number crunching was instantly changed forever! The perfect technology had arrived, and there was never even a competition, right? Well, not so much. The simple fact is that computers sucked for decades. Digital machines have all kinds of inherent pitfalls. There was another entire lineage of computers that existed in the shadow of digital machines: the analogs. Eventually the two technologies would merge in an attempt to create the truly perfect machine: one with the flexibility and accuracy of a digital computer, and the speed and interactivity of an analog computer. The result were hybrids!