Overview

In 1801 Joseph-Marie Jacquard (1752-1834), a French weaver distressed by the poor working conditions plaguing laborers, revolutionized the weaving process with his invention of the Jacquard loom. A highly influential innovation in textile technology, his automated loom used punch cards to control intricate weaving of patterns and fabrics with more efficiency than human hands. Jacquard's idea of programming an automated machine using punch cards was used to design the first automated calculators and was eventually part of the earliest computers developed. His invention not only impacted the industrial...