Getting ‘Back to the drawing board’ exists as a proverbial English idiom for failure, but more than that it’s carries the idea of hope, of new ideas, new creation – in the capital world, it means taking that which is old, and making it better, faster, cheaper.

Gathering a clear picture of the order of this old board, starts with a few notes on computing history, as an answer to how our world got here. Then with a question, “Who is in the business of creating computing machines, their components, building blocks, elements, and factors?”

In my time, computers have made an indelible impact in the halls of my mind. From the early virus infections of Windows 2000 to the terminally slow connection to DSL modems – fighting digitally for bandwidth. The red, yellow, and white inputs of some system generating tremendous playable audio and video; the brightest blue LED controller! All an enigmas black box created so delicately, working so perfectly that often the mind would be lost in the experience. Yet, there were points when this machine or that component would show flaws: a non-working disc, the loss of innocence in shadowy world, and a puzzle too hard for a novel mind to solve.

The first computer, if we might call it that, is as remote to a modern machine as it is distant in time, but it is there – in the abacus, a counting machine from 300 BC that we might find the root, the link of all future computers. That is all to say – that a computer counts and provides humans a means – to quantify. Until I get another breakthrough… check out this online abacus.