[ehnto]

I think a modern carb and distributor would get you a nicer running car if you wanted to stay analog. There were plenty of improvements from 1940 until the time we switched to computer control.

But for a digital solution, you're looking at an EFI conversion kit, with a ready made wiring harness to convert the necessary items to run the EFI. It is common enough to do that you'd have no trouble sourcing advice and if you like that kind of thing it would be a great project. I see Holley do good looking kits but I can't speak from experience sorry.

The difference between an ECU run V8 and an "analog" V8 is mostly in electronic control of ignition timing and fuel injection, and all the sensors needed for the ECU to know what's going on. I think just replacing the carb with an EFI carb kit would be a great project, but to take it further you would need to ditch the distributor and use coilpacks and ignitors controlled by the ECU, and a timing sensor to sense the position of the crank. At that point you need a full ECU and speeduino would do the trick, but there are supported manufactures of aftermarket ECUs as well like Haltech, Holley, Motec, and Link.