Jacquard Loom

In 1801, the Frenchman Joseph Jacquard invented a loom in which the raising of the warp threads was controlled by punched cards. Each harness was replaced by a collection of hooks linked to the warp threads, and each collection of hooks could be raised or lowered as a group. This in itself was nothing new--such draw looms had existed for hundreds of years.

Photograph courtesy of J.A.N. Lee, VPI & SU, Annals of the History of Computing, 10(4), 1988, p. 448, from the SUCCEED Engineering Visual Database

Typically, such looms had two operators: the master weaver who sat at the front of the loom, and the drawboy who was an apprentice weaver and sat within the loom itself, raising the hooks at the command of the master weaver. What Jacquard did, though, was to mechanize not only the physical power of the drawboy but also the skill of the master. Instead of the drawboy raising and lowering the groups of hooks, this process was controlled by cards of wood or paper with holes punched in them. Each card in turn passed into a box containing many small wires that were connected to the hooks. The tips of the wires were pressed onto the punched card, and where there was a hole for a wire to pass through the card, the corresponding warp thread would be raised, thus forming the pattern, row by row--and card by card.