1752: Joseph Marie Jacquard is born in Lyon, France. The weaver and inventor would create the first programmable power loom, revolutionize the weaving industry and lay the foundation for modern data computation.
Jacquard came from a family of silk weavers and went through a bankruptcy and the French Revolution before starting work on an automated, mechanical loom. Weaving then was a long, tedious and repetitive process with little automation. To create a pattern, a drawboy would sit inside a loom and move the threads according to the directions of the weaver.
Jacquard thought of creating a system that would be controlled by a set of cards to mechanically produce any pattern. He constructed a loom in 1801 that used a series of punched cards to weave a pattern of threads. The invention came to be known as the Jacquard loom.
The loom is controlled by a system of stiff punch cards and hooks. Each row of holes punched in the cards corresponds to one row of thread in the design. When the hooks align with one of the punched holes, they are able able to pass through the hole with a thread, thus creating the required stitch to form the pattern.
The simplest, repeating designs could fit on a single card. Other patterns required several cards. For heavily brocaded materials, the patterns were created by shuffling through a deck of cards.
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The loom wasn't universally loved when it was introduced. Some weavers feared the Jacquard loom would simplify the process of weaving so much that they would be out of jobs. Jacquard was nearly killed by an angry mob, and many of his looms were destroyed.
Eventually, however, they were widely accepted. A reported 11,000 Jacquard looms were working in France by 1812. Jacquard died in 1834.
Though born in the 18th century, Jacquard's influence continues. The loom from the dawn of the 19th century has had great implications for computing.
The idea of using punch cards to instruct and control a system became the basis of computer programming. Nineteenth-century English mathematician Charles Babbage planned to use punch cards to program his analytical engine. The engine would have used loops of Jacquard's punched cards to control a mechanical calculator — the forerunner of today's methods of computer programming.
Statistician Herman Hollerith used punch cards to tabulate data from the 1890 U.S. census. The cards evolved into the mid-20th century's ubiquitous IBM cards that were used in early computing to store data as well as program the way the data would be processed.
In the 21st century, Jacquard's loom has come full circle . A recent exhibition of open source embroidery cited the Jacquard loom as an example of how weavers and embroiderers share common principles with programmers.
Source: Various
*Photo: A weaver adjusts a Jacquard loom/Corbis
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