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