At the beginning of the 19th century, French weaver and inventor Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented a new technology for industrially applying patterns to fabric. Nowadays such fabrics are called jacquard, and his machine is called a jacquard loom. Jacquard's invention makes it possible to obtain various light effects on the surface of the fabric, and in combination with different colors and thread materials - beautiful, soft transitions of tones and sharply defined contours of patterns, sometimes very complex (ornaments, landscapes, portraits, etc.). Jacquard is used for sewing dresses, outerwear, furniture fabrics, curtains, as well as for making lanyards, badge ribbons and other promotional materials (stripes, chevrons, labels, promotional tapes).
Joseph Jacquard was born on July 7, 1752. in Lyon. His father owned a small family weaving business (two looms) and Joseph also began his working career as a child in one of the many weaving factories in Lyon. But this hard and unsafe work did not attract him, and the future inventor went to study and work in a bookbinding workshop.
But Jacquard was not destined to become an outstanding inventor in bookbinding or book printing. Soon his parents die, and he inherits looms and a small plot of land. As a result of several unsuccessful business projects, Joseph loses most of his father's inheritance, but at the same time becomes interested in the engineering problem of improving the weaving loom.
Despite the rapid development of weaving production in France, the capabilities of the 
looms were very limited. Single-color fabrics or colored stripes were produced en masse. Fabrics with embroidered patterns were still made by hand. Jacquard wanted to improve the loom so that patterned fabrics could be produced industrially.
By 1790, Jacquard had created a prototype of the machine, but his active participation in revolutionary events in France did not allow him to continue working on improving his invention. After the revolution, Jacquard continued his design quest in a different direction. He invented a machine for weaving nets and in 1801 he took it to an exhibition in Paris. There he saw the loom of Jacques de Vaucanson, which as early as 1745 used a perforated roll of paper to control the weave of threads. What he saw gave Jacquard a brilliant idea, which he successfully used in his loom.
To control each thread individually, Jacquard came up with a punched card and an ingenious mechanism for reading information from it. This made it possible to weave fabrics with patterns predetermined on a punched card. In 1804, Jacquard's invention received a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition, and he was issued a corresponding patent. The final industrial version of the jacquard loom was ready by 1807.
In 1808, Napoleon I awarded Jacquard a prize of 3,000 francs and the right to a bonus of 50 francs per person. 
a machine of his design operating in France. By 1812, more than ten thousand jacquard looms were in operation in France. In 1819, Jacquard received the Cross of the Legion of Honor.
Joseph Marie Jacquard died in 1834 at the age of 82. In Lyon in 1840 a monument was erected to him. The Jacquard loom made it possible not only to industrially weave fabrics with complex patterns (Jacquard), but also became the prototype of modern automatic looms.
The Jacquard machine is the first machine that used a punched card in its work.
Already in 1823, the English scientist Charles Babaj tried to build a computer using punched cards. At the end of the 19th century, an American scientist built a computer and used it to process the results of the 1890 census. Punched cards were used in computing until the mid-twentieth century.
Sitting today in front of computer screens, we do not think about the fact that we received all these “electronic conveniences” not only thanks to advances in the fields of electronics, mathematics, cybernetics and chemistry. No matter how strange it may sound, the development of the textile industry played an important role in the emergence of what we call a “computer”.
Throughout the history of the existence of the species homo sapiens, man has come up with various ways to simplify his work. The field of activity such as clothing production was no exception. The first mentions of weaving looms date back to the fifth millennium BC. e. These primitive mechanisms consisted of a simple vertical frame on which warp threads were stretched. The weaver had to hold a large shuttle with thread in his hands and weave the warp. This was a very labor-intensive job, since the threads had to be sequentially sorted by hand, they often broke, and the fabric turned out to be very thick. A little later, a loom with a horizontal frame appeared in Egypt. A person worked behind such a frame while standing, and the words “mill”, “machine” came from the word “stand”. Be that as it may, the work of a weaver still remained difficult.
Only in the 18th century did mechanical looms begin to appear. In 1733, the English clothier John Kay invented a mechanical shuttle for a handloom. The invention made it possible not to throw the shuttle manually, and also enabled the weaver to produce wide fabrics on a machine without the help of an apprentice. In 1771, the English city of Cromford began operating a spinning factory of the major industrialist and inventor Edmund Arkwright, the machines in which were driven by a water wheel. Inspired by a visit to Arkwright's factory, another English inventor, Edmund Cartwright, received a patent for a foot-powered power loom in 1785 and set up a weaving factory in Yorkshire with 20 such machines.
The rapid development of technical thought in the field of weaving in the 18th century, of course, greatly simplified the work of weavers, but, nevertheless, many issues remained unresolved. For example, producing fabrics with complex patterns was a real challenge. Only the best craftsmen could produce such fabrics, and they did not work alone. Inside the machine there had to be an apprentice who, at the command of the master, manually raised and lowered the warp threads, the number of which could number in the hundreds. Such a process was extremely labor-intensive and slow, it required enormous concentration, and for mistakes, which happened quite often, one had to pay a lot of time. In addition, the process of converting the machine from producing one pattern to another, which took several days, was also time-consuming.
Of course, the inquisitive mind of man could not ignore this problem. Based on the task, two requirements were formed: the new mechanism must reproduce the movements of the weaver and his apprentice according to a predetermined scenario; it must have some kind of memory device to store a sequence of commands for making certain patterns. Many inventors tried to cope with this task, including Basil Bouchon, Jean-Baptiste Falcon, Jacques Vaucanson. Their mechanisms partially satisfied the formulated requirements, but for various reasons the work was not brought to its logical conclusion, and their machines did not become widespread in the weaving industry. The only one who succeeded was the French inventor Joseph Jacquard. His creative years occurred at a time when two revolutions were raging - the Great French and Industrial. Everything was changing, and Jacquard became one of the sources of these changes.
Biography of Jacquard
Joseph Marie Charles, later known as Jacquard, a nickname given to his family, was born on July 7, 1752 in the French city of Lyon. He was the fifth of nine children of Jean Charles, a master weaver who worked in a brocade workshop, and his wife Antoinette Rivier. Like many sons of weavers of that time, Joseph Marie did not attend school, as his father needed him as an apprentice. He learned to read only at the age of 13, thanks to his half-brother Barrett, a very educated man. Joseph's mother died in 1762, and his father in 1772. After the death of his parents, Jacquard inherited his father's apartments and his workshop, equipped with two weaving looms. In 1778 he himself became a master weaver and silk merchant. That same year he married the wealthy widow Claudia Boichon. In this marriage, in 1779, their only son, Jean Marie, was born.
| Joseph Marie Jacquard |
Over the course of a number of years, Jacquard made several dubious transactions, as a result of which he fell into debt and lost all of his inheritance and part of his wife's property. As a result, Claudia remained with her son in Lyon, where she worked in a straw hat factory, and Joseph went around France in search of luck. He managed to work both as a lime burner and as a laborer in quarries, and as a result, returned home in the late 1780s.
At the beginning of the French Revolution, Joseph, along with his son, took part in the unsuccessful defense of Lyon against the forces of the National Convention. When the city fell, they managed to escape. Thereafter, under false names, they joined the Revolutionary Army. In one of the bloody battles, Jean Marie was fatally struck by a bullet, and having lost the meaning of life, Joseph Marie Jacquard returned to Lyon in 1798. After treatment in the hospital, he took on any work he could - repairing looms, sewing fabrics, bleaching straw hats, driving carts. This continued until 1799, when he decided to start automating looms. This idea ultimately brought him fame.
Inventive activity
Extensive experience working with machines as an apprentice, weaver and operator made it clear to Jacquard that the production of fabric, although it is a rather complex and meticulous task on the one hand, on the other hand, is simply a routine process with a lot of repetitive actions. He believed that embroidering complex patterns could be automated, that is, reduced to a minimum set of simple movements. In addition, he was aware of the successes and failures of his compatriots in the field of automation of weaving production.
As a result, Jacquard conceived of a system whose operation depended on a sequence of holes on special solid plates. Today we would call them punch cards. It should also be noted that similar prototypes of punched cards were implemented on the machines of Bouchon, Falcon and Vaucanson, but their devices either could control a small number of threads, or were too complex and expensive to manufacture and maintain. Taking into account all the shortcomings of his predecessors, Jacquard made punched cards with many rows of holes, this allowed the machine to operate with a large number of threads. He also simplified the mechanism for feeding punched cards into the machine’s reading device by making them into a long closed tape. In this case, each card corresponded to one shuttle pass. The machine's reading mechanism was a set of probes that were connected to rods that controlled the movement of the threads. As the card passed, the probes pressed against it and remained motionless, and if any holes were encountered along the way of any probes, the probes fell into them and lifted up the corresponding warp threads, thereby forming the upper part of the shed, that is, the main overlaps in the fabric. The lowering of the warp threads occurred under the influence of gravity of the weights. The lowered warp threads formed the lower part of the shed or weft weave in the fabric. Thus, the correct sequence of cut and uncut places on the punched cards made it possible to carry out the necessary alternation of raising and lowering of the warp threads, which ultimately formed the required pattern.
Jacquard made the first example of his own loom in 1801. The machine, however, was not intended for embroidering complex patterns on fabric, but for weaving fishing nets, since Joseph Marie learned from the newspaper that the English Royal Society for the Promotion of the Arts had announced a competition for the manufacture of such a mechanism. As a result, he simultaneously exhibited his brainchild at competitions of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Arts and the Society for the Encouragement of Crafts and Arts in France. In Great Britain, his machine was not awarded any award, but in his homeland, France, the invention attracted the attention of interested parties, and as a result, in 1804, Jacquard was invited to Paris, where in the workshops of the Conservatory of Arts and Crafts he was to complete the construction of his mechanism. There Jacquard discovered a collection of machines from Vaucanson's office, among which was a sample of a patterned machine. Having carefully familiarized himself in practice with the principle of its operation, Joseph Marie made some improvements to his own development.
A year later, Jacquard and his invention received the attention of Napoleon himself. The Emperor of France was well aware of the importance of textile production for the country's economy, and therefore placed a large order for cloth in Lyon, a city long famous for its weavers. In April 1805, during his visit to the city, Napoleon and his wife Josephine visited Jacquard's workshop, where he was shown a miracle machine. Assessing the efficiency and ease of maintenance of this mechanism, the Emperor granted Jacquard a pension of 3,000 francs and the right to receive a deduction of 50 francs from each machine that worked in the French manufactory. Napoleon ordered the patent for the invention to be transferred to public use. So Jacquard lost his intellectual property, but acquired a substantial income for those times and government support. In addition, the scale of distribution of Jacquard's machines grew by leaps and bounds, which increased his profits and, ultimately, made him one of the richest people in the city. By 1812, over 11,000 of these weaving machines were operating in France, and despite the French government's attempts to keep the technology secret, similar machines began to appear in other countries.
Although the invention brought fame and fame to Jacquard, among his compatriots there were those who directly condemned him and even moved to open confrontation. Of course, these were Lyon weavers, angry that the massive introduction of new weaving machines into production was putting many people out of work. And for a city in which weaving is the leading craft, this becomes especially critical and explosive. Even before Jacquard gained widespread fame, some weavers realized what danger a new machine could pose for them, and one day, breaking into his workshop, they broke all the mechanisms there. The inventor himself was repeatedly beaten, but, no matter what, secretly continued to work on his brainchild until he received fortune, fame and approval from the supreme power.
Jacquard lived the rest of his days in prosperity and died in the quiet town of Oullen, located in southeastern France near the Alps. Six years later, the grateful residents of Lyon erected a monument in his honor on the very spot where his workshop was located.
The influence of Jaccard's invention on the further development of technical thought
The principle of “programming” mechanisms using punched cards, which formed the basis of the Jacquard loom, became revolutionary for its time. The wide distribution of such machines encouraged other inventors and craftsmen to think about using this principle in their developments.
The pioneer of Russian cybernetics, Semyon Nikolaevich Korsakov (1787-1853), submitted an application to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in 1832 for the invention of a “machine for comparing ideas.” This “machine” was a series of devices that were combined into a kind of information retrieval system. In modern terms, it could be called a “tool for creating and processing databases.” The main information carriers in these devices were punched cards, which were stored in special filing cabinets and mechanically sorted according to certain criteria. Korsakov first became acquainted with punched cards two decades before filing this application. He participated in the Patriotic War of 1812, and then in the Foreign Campaign against Napoleon of 1813-1814, during which he visited Paris with the Russian army, where he saw a working Jacquard machine with a program pre-loaded into it, “written” on punched cards. Returning to Russia, Korsakov became the head of the statistical department, and routine work with statistical materials prompted him to create a number of devices using punched cards as information carriers. Korsakov’s mechanisms, unfortunately, were not widely used, although he himself successfully used them to compile databases in the process of his work.
In 1834, the English mathematician Charles Babbage (1791-1871) began work on an automatic device for solving a wide range of mathematical problems - the “analytical engine”. Before this, he had the unsuccessful experience of building a “difference engine,” a huge and complex mechanism that operated with a large number of gears. Now, according to Babbage's plan, punch cards were to replace gears. For this purpose, he specially traveled to Paris to study the principle of “programming” Jacquard’s machines using punched cards. Babbage was unable to complete the machine due to its complexity and lack of financial resources, however, the principles underlying it contributed to the further development of computer technology.
In computing, punched cards gained practical usefulness and importance thanks to the American engineer and inventor Herman Hollerith (1860-1929). In 1890, for the needs of the US Census Bureau, he developed a tabulator - a mechanism for processing statistical data using punched cards as storage media. In 1911, the Tabulating Machine Company, a company founded by Hollerith, was renamed International Business Machines (IBM). Punched cards were successfully used in computing until the second half of the last century, until they were replaced by more advanced storage media.
As for jacquard machines, they are still used in the manufacture of high-quality products. The main difference from the machines of two centuries ago is the use of a computer and an image scanner. Today, designers use a scanner to transfer the pattern that needs to be applied to the fabric into a computer, then based on the resulting image, a program is compiled for the machine with the necessary sequence of operations. Naturally, this process of specifying a pattern algorithm takes much less time than for the first “programmers”.
French inventor of the weaving mill for patterned fabrics (Jacquard machine).
The son of a weaver, he apprenticed with a bookbinder, then became a wordsmith and finally a weaver.
He made his first attempt to set up a self-powered weaving mill in 1790; then he invented a machine for knitting nets and took it to Paris in 1804, where Vaucanson’s models guided him to the final design of the mill, which was fully completed only in 1808. Napoleon I awarded Jacquard a pension of 3,000 francs and the right to levy a bonus of 50 francs from each worker in France mill of its design. In 1840, a monument to Jacquard was erected in Lyon.
Jacquard weaving loom. Jacquard's invention is a very ingenious mechanism: in terms of the variety and accuracy of its action, it can be equated to the movements of a well-trained animal. To obtain a patterned fabric, it is not enough to alternately lower all the even or all odd warp threads in order to pass a shuttle with a weft thread into the resulting “shew”, but it is necessary to lower only some of them, in a certain order, different for all the weft threads that make up a given pattern. Each The warp thread passes in the weaving mill through a special ring-thread, connected by Jacquard to a special vertical rod. They are all arranged rather closely, in rows, and on their upper ends a piece of cardboard with holes corresponding to the rods is pressed, which must be left alone. The number of such cardboards required for the pattern is connected in a continuous chain, and a simple mechanism shifts them automatically after each pass of the shuttle. The principle of the Jaccard machine is used in many devices, for example, in the aristophone, a mechanical taper, and one of Winston’s telegraphs.
Jacquard.
Jacquard is, first of all, one of the most refined and noble fabrics that all furniture manufacturers love for its strength, beautiful and unique aesthetic appearance, ease of processing and wear resistance. When made by hand, jacquard is one of the most labor-intensive and complex weaves. Externally, jacquard is somewhat reminiscent of a tapestry, since it has a pronounced contour and relief rise in the pattern and is distinguished by its high strength and nobility. Sometimes jacquard is used not only for upholstery, but also as curtains or as room decoration.
Jacquard weave refers to a complex, intricate weave made on a loom invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1801. His method of automatically controlling the thread on a loom was to use special cards with holes drilled in certain places. The uniqueness of the jacquard mechanism lies in the ability to control individual thread warps when forming a canopy for each thread direction. Hundreds of these threads can be used to create intricate patterns on a loom. Using cards and punched cards, the sequence of formation of the thread direction for each pattern is programmed. Punch cards later formed the basis not only of looms, but also of the telegraph and all modern computing technology! The first computers, as we remember, worked using punched cards.
Until today, the principle of creating jacquard fabric has remained unchanged, except for one thing - the modern machine is controlled by a computer.
Joseph Marie Jacquard(sometimes Jacquard; fr. Joseph Marie Jacquard; July 7 ( 17520707 ) , Lyon - August 7, Ullen, Rhône department) - French inventor of the weaving machine for patterned fabrics (known as the Jacquard machine).
The son of a weaver, he apprenticed with a bookbinder, then became a wordsmith and, finally, a weaver. He made his first attempt to build a self-acting loom in 1790; then he invented a machine for knitting nets and took it to Paris in 1804, where Vaucanson’s models led him to the final design of the machine, which was fully completed only in 1808. Napoleon I awarded Jacquard a pension of 3,000 francs and the right to levy a bonus of 50 francs from each mill of his design operating in France. In 1840, a monument to Jacquard was erected in Lyon.
Jacquard's invention is a very ingenious mechanism in terms of the variety and accuracy of its action. To obtain a patterned fabric, it is not enough to alternately lower all the even or all odd warp threads in order to pass a shuttle with a weft thread into the resulting “shew”, but it is necessary to lower only some of them, in a certain order, different for all the weft threads that make up a given pattern. Each warp thread passes in the weaving mill through a special thread ring, connected by Jacquard to a special vertical rod. They are all arranged rather closely, in rows, and on their upper ends a piece of cardboard with holes corresponding to the rods is pressed, which must be left alone. The number of such cardboards required for the pattern is connected in a continuous chain, and a simple mechanism shifts them automatically after each pass of the shuttle. The principle of the Jaccard machine is used in many devices, for example in the aristophone, mechanical taper, one of Wheatstone's telegraphs and the like.
see also
Write a review of the article "Jaccard, Joseph Marie"
Literature
- Grausard. Jacquard, sa vie. - Lille, 1884.
- Kohl Fr.. - B., 1873.
Links
- // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.
Excerpt characterizing Jacquard, Joseph Marie
- Yes, be afraid, don’t be afraid, it doesn’t matter - you won’t escape.- And you’re still afraid! “Eh, you learned people,” said a third courageous voice, interrupting both. “You artillerymen are very learned because you can take everything with you, including vodka and snacks.
And the owner of the courageous voice, apparently an infantry officer, laughed.
“But you’re still afraid,” continued the first familiar voice. – You’re afraid of the unknown, that’s what. Whatever you say, the soul will go to heaven... after all, we know that there is no heaven, but only one sphere.
Again the courageous voice interrupted the artilleryman.
“Well, treat me to your herbalist, Tushin,” he said.
“Ah, this is the same captain who stood at the sutler’s without boots,” thought Prince Andrei, recognizing with pleasure the pleasant, philosophizing voice.
“You can learn herbalism,” said Tushin, “but still comprehend the future life...
He didn't finish. At this time a whistle was heard in the air; closer, closer, faster and louder, louder and faster, and the cannonball, as if not having finished everything it needed to say, exploding spray with superhuman force, plopped into the ground not far from the booth. The earth seemed to gasp from a terrible blow.
At the same moment, little Tushin jumped out of the booth first of all with his pipe bitten on his side; his kind, intelligent face was somewhat pale. The owner of the courageous voice, a dashing infantry officer, came out behind him and ran to his company, buttoning up his boots as he ran.
Prince Andrei stood on horseback on the battery, looking at the smoke of the gun from which the cannonball flew out. His eyes darted across the vast space. He only saw that the previously motionless masses of the French were swaying, and that there really was a battery to the left. The smoke has not yet cleared from it. Two French cavalry, probably adjutants, galloped along the mountain. A clearly visible small column of the enemy was moving downhill, probably to strengthen the chain. The smoke of the first shot had not yet cleared when another smoke and a shot appeared. The battle has begun. Prince Andrei turned his horse and galloped back to Grunt to look for Prince Bagration. Behind him, he heard the cannonade becoming more frequent and louder. Apparently, our people were starting to respond. Below, in the place where the envoys were passing, rifle shots were heard.
Le Marrois (Le Marierois), with Bonaparte's menacing letter, had just galloped up to Murat, and the ashamed Murat, wanting to make amends for his mistake, immediately moved his troops to the center and bypassing both flanks, hoping to crush the insignificant one standing in front of him before the evening and before the arrival of the emperor. him, squad.
Joseph Marie Jacquard is a famous inventor of the 17th - 19th centuries. His main invention - an industrial method for producing fabric - is of great importance for modern computer science and helped develop the first prototype of electronic
Joseph Marie Jacquard: short biography
J. M. Jacquard (1754 - 1834) is famous for the invention of the industrial loom. The future French inventor was born in Lyon in 1752. As the son of a weaver, Joseph Jacquard was apprenticed to a bookbinder and was able to work in a foundry, an enterprise that created metal plates with type and ink for printing.
However, after the death of his father, his son inherited his business and became a weaver. Joseph lost his son during the French Revolution, then Lyon fell, the revolutionaries had to leave the city and go underground. Returning to his native Lyon, Jacquard took on any job and repaired many different looms in an attempt to take his mind off his grief.
In 1790, Joseph Marie Jacquard made the first attempt to create an industrial machine. Lyon at that time, as now, was a busy industrial area of France, with many trade routes passing through it from ports deeper into the continent. The inventor gets acquainted with autonomous machines Jacques de Vaucanson, who opened his own production in the city. Witty and elegant mechanical toys in the form of animals and people amazed Jaccard and helped correct the shortcomings of his own invention.
Recognition of Jacquard's merits by contemporaries
In 1808, work on the loom was completed. Having become an empire, France could no longer satisfy the needs of a huge, constantly warring army with the help of manual labor. The need for fabrics was urgent, so an industrial machine came in handy.
The achievements of Joseph Marie Jacquard were noted by Napoleon I, the weaver was entitled to a considerable pension from the state and was given the right to collect monetary contributions in his favor from each French loom of an invented design. In 1840, the noble residents of Lyon erected a monument in honor of the inventor who glorified the city.
Jacquard
Joseph's machines and the resulting fabric were called jacquard in honor of the creator. Jacquard had an unusually wide use both in past times and now. Outerwear, unusually beautiful dresses, as well as covers and upholstery for furniture are made from this fabric.
Fabric repeats contain at least 24 threads that weave unusually complex and beautiful patterns. Materials can be combined during creation, which makes it possible to create very interesting effects on finished products. Decorating home interiors in the Rococo and Baroque style is almost impossible without chic jacquard curtains, upholstery and pillows.
The complexity of making reports made the work of the craftsmen and the finished fabric incredibly expensive; only aristocrats and the rich could afford such a luxury. Dresses and outfits made of jacquard still amaze with the beauty of their patterns; for kings and close aristocrats, gold and silver threads were used in weaving.
The tight weave and intricate patterns create a unique relief and tapestry effect. The thicker the thread, the denser and stronger the fabric itself. Thin and soft jacquard is used for dresses, rough and dense - for upholstery and covers, or even when creating carpets.
Jacquard weaving machine
The main difference of the machine invented by Jacquard was that the position of the thread in the pattern did not depend on its parity. Each thread in the pattern had its own weaving program. The position of the threads was controlled by simple cards made of thick paper - perforated prisms. Punch cards could control up to 100 threads and were of appropriate length.
The report prisms were stitched into one working tape and changed as needed by the machine operator. The machine itself is incredibly simple and yet effective. It necessarily includes a board-frame for the fabric and its cords, a large set of hooks and knives, needles and program pattern cards for each thread. All threads pass through the holes of the long board for even distribution. The hooks catch the spindle and can carry it beyond the reach of the blades. The warp threads are tensioned at the bottom of the device in a horizontal direction.
The needles move along slots in the program cards. They have cut and uncut areas; the operator can specify rocking and rotational movements of the prisms along which the control needles move. The uncut areas of the cards retract the needles and remove the hook from the spindle, while the active needle causes the hook to move the desired thread.
Elegant solution
The jacquard loom is an outstanding example of a computer-controlled machine, invented before the term "binary code" was coined. Punch cards change the position of the needle from “active” to “inactive” and embody the “zero/one” operating principle of all computer technology, known to all modern computer scientists.
Joseph's punch cards were used for their intended purpose much later, and his invention became the first programmable device and for a long time determined the direction of further development of industrial technology throughout the world.
What did the inventor not realize?
The invention of the industrial loom was a real breakthrough not only for contemporaries, but also brought closer the creation of autonomous computing technology by subsequent generations. Joseph Marie Jacquard apparently had no idea about the real significance of what he invented.
However, it was the simple cardboard weaving control tables that laid the principle for programming production lines in the future. Joseph Marie Jacquard can be called The practical achievements of the inventor are truly unique, because the theoretical foundations of the concept of an algorithm and the description of the simplest principles of programming were made only during the Second World War. The scientist developed his abstract machine to crack secret military ciphers, like the famous Enigma code.