Chalk it up

Today I went to check the spelling on an every day phrase. Then I realized that I wasn't sure that I even had the right word. For the life of me I couldn't even figure out why I was saying the phrase. It isn't clever. It's just the phrase that people say: chalk it up. Wikipedia was no help to me on this one. I looked all over & I can only assume that the phrase comes from some kind of score board where you would chalk up the answer. Anyone know the origin to this one?