TL;DR x86 is little-endian for compatibility with the Datapoint 2200. From Stan Mazor's 1995 survey article "The History of the microcomputer - Invention and E

TL;DR x86 is little-endian for compatibility with the Datapoint 2200. From Stan Mazor's 1995 survey article "The History of the microcomputer - Invention and Evolution" from Proceedings of the IEEE, pp. 1601-1607, Dec. 1995, A. Little Endian Some have wondered why the addresses in the 8008 were stored "backward" with the little end first, e.g., the low order byte of a two byte address is stored in the lower addressed memory location. I (regrettably) specified this ordering as part of the JUMP instruction format in the spirit of compatibility with the Datapoint 2200. Recall that their original processor was bit serial; the addresses would be stored low to high bit in the machine code (bit backward). Other computer makers organize the addresses with the "big end" first. The lack of standardization has been a problem in the industry.