The Evolution of Computing Hardware: From Tally Sticks to Multi-Core Chips
Computing hardware didn’t spring into being overnight — it’s the story of a long, relentless push to make machines faster, cheaper, and able to store ever more information. What began as simple human aids for counting gradually turned into programmable mechanical devices, then into electricity-driven machines, and finally into the microchip ecosystems that power everything around us today. This post walks through that journey: the inventiveness, the engineering breakthroughs, the key milestones, and why each step mattered.. Beginnings: Humans, Tally Marks and the Abacus Long before “computer” meant a machine, it meant a person who calculated. The earliest tools were simple and tangible — tally sticks, clay tokens, counting rods and the abacus — all one-to-one representations of quantities. These devices made bookkeeping and trade possible. Over centuries, the need to automate repetitive arithmetic led to increasingly clever mechanical aids. Mechanical Calculators and Programmable ...