Tally stick

Tallies have been used for numerous purposes such as messaging and scheduling, and especially in financial and legal transactions, to the point of being currency.

Related to the single tally concept are messenger sticks (used by, e.g., Inuit tribes), the knotted cords, khipus or quipus, as used by the Inca.

The split tally became a prevalent technique in medieval Europe, a time characterised by a scarcity of coinage and widespread illiteracy, to document bilateral exchanges and debts.

Typically fashioned from squared hazelwood, the stick was inscribed with a series of notches before being split lengthwise.

Then tally sticks began to be issued in advance, in order to finance war and other royal spending, and circulated as "wooden money".

[12] Royal tallies (debt of the Crown) also played a role in the formation of the Bank of England at the end of the 17th century.

The government promised not only to pay the Bank interest on the tallies subscribed but to redeem them over a period of years.

4. c .15, tally sticks representing six centuries' worth of financial records were ordered to be burned in two furnaces in the Houses of Parliament.