Who created the first computer hardware?

The earliest counting devise was a form of a tally stick, but throughout the Fertile Crescent state that calculi represented counts of items. Calculi include clay spheres, cones, and other shapes. They most likely represented livestock or grain containers.

The Roman abacus was invented in 2400 BC in Babylonia and used for arithmetic tasks. Medieval Europe had counting houses, where checkered cloths would represent different sums of money and calculate different amounts.

Analog computers were introduced in ancient Greece for astronomical calculations, and these are referred to as the earliest mechanical analog computers.

Al-Jaziri invented the "castle clock" in 1206, and this is thought to be the earliest programmable analog computer which displayed solar and lunar orbits, the zodiac, five robotic musicians who played music when struck by levelers attached to a water wheel. It could program the length of day and night.

John Napier and Wilhelm Schickard designed calculating clocks which noted multiplication and division of numbers, as well as logarithms. Blaise Pascal worked on calculating machines and created mechanical calculators. Charles Xavier Thomas created the first mass produced mechanical calculator--the Thomas Arithmometer, based on Leibniz' Stepped Reckoner created in 1672. Ryoichi Yazo created a mechanical calculator in 1903 and sold 200 unites to governmental agencies.

Desktop calculators were invented in the early 1900s, and "computer" became a job title assigned to people who used calculators to perform mathematical equations. Curta, introduced in 1948, was the first small mechanical calculator.

During World War II, advanced analog computers were introduced. They included options to aim weapons and fire vessels or model econometric flows.

Digital computation became popular post WWII, and computers such as the Zuse series (1938), now had memory and programmability. Then after the 1960s, "third-generation computers" became popular and have transformed into the computers we use today.