[kens]

Hardware stacks are a relatively recent feature (in historical terms) even though subroutine calls go way back. Many systems did subroutine calls by saving the return address in a register. On the IBM 1401, when you called a subroutine, the subroutine would actually modify the jump instruction at the end of the subroutine to jump back to the caller. Needless to say, this wouldn't work with recursion. On the PDP-8, a jump to subroutine would automatically store the return address in the first word of the subroutine.

On many systems, if you wanted a stack, you had to implement it in software. For instance, on the Xerox Alto (1973), when you called a subroutine, the subroutine would then call a library routine that would save the return address and set up a stack frame. You'd call another library routine to return from the subroutine and it would pop stuff from the stack.

The 8008, Intel's first 8-bit microprocessor, had an 8-level subroutine stack inside the chip. There were no push or pop instructions.