Joseph Marie Jacquard (nonfiction)

This portrait of Jacquard was woven in silk on a Jacquard loom and required 24,000 punched cards to create (1839). It was only produced to order. One of these portraits in the possession of Charles Babbage inspired him in using perforated cards in his analytical engine. It is in the collection of the Science Museum in London, England.

Joseph Marie Charles dit (called or nicknamed) Jacquard (7 July 1752 – 7 August 1834) was a French weaver and merchant.

He played an important role in the development of the earliest programmable loom -- the Jacquard loom -- which in turn played an important role in the development of other programmable machines, such as an early version of digital compiler used by IBM to develop the modern day computer.

The potential of Jacquard’s loom was immediately recognized. On April 12, 1805, Emperor Napoleon and Empress Josephine visited Lyon and viewed Jacquard’s new loom. On April 15, 1805, the emperor granted the patent for Jacquard’s loom to the city of Lyon. In return, Jacquard received a lifelong pension of 3,000 francs; furthermore, he received a royalty of 50 francs for each loom that was bought and used during the period from 1805 to 1811.

In the News

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  Ishango bone used as shuttle in Jacquard loom unexpected performs floating point computation.

Fiction cross-reference

• Charles Babbage -
• Forbidden Ratio - Supervillain with grudge against all things computational, including Jacquard looms.
• Herman Hollerith - "the Card Man", "the Ticketologist", etc.

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Charles Babbage (nonfiction)
• Computation (nonfiction)
• Computer science (nonfiction)
• Herman Hollerith (nonfiction)
• Jacquard loom (nonfiction)

External links:

• Joseph Marie Jacquard @ Wikipedia