Difference between revisions of "History of Computers - Joseph Jacquard"

Revision as of 17:45, 7 September 2008

• Overview
• Significance
• References

Joseph-Marie Jacquard was a French man born to a family of weavers,in July 7,1752 in Lyon. He inherited his family's business when they died. When working as a draw boy,a job in which a person would sit inside of the loom and move threads according to how the master weaver commanded, he discovered that the job of weaving was tedious and unpleasant. Also weavers could not make much money because the work put into textiles heavily outweighed the profits. Jacquard decided to create a programmable that would allow for faster and easier creation of textiles.

Overview

Joseph-Marie Jacquard completed his automatic loom in 1801 and presented in Paris in 1804, where Napoleon Bonaparte advanced means to continue Jacquard's experiments; for his invention he received a medal and a patent. Jacquard sold the rights to his loom, making it public property. Jacquard's loom worked by using a series of hooks with needles and wooden cards. The cards were thick and had rectangular holes in them. When the hooks and needles came in contact with the card, they would remain stationary. Hooks would eventually encounter holes, and fall into the holes, while the needle inserted another thread. The arrangement of the holes would create different patterns, and the cards could be re-used to create the same pattern over and over again. Master weavers despised Jacquard 's invention, because it made them obsolete because they could not produce identical patterns or do it as fast. Jacquard's invention made the weaving process easier and cheaper.

Significance

The programmable loom's punch cards were the first form of ROM (read only memory), memory in the form of holes on the card could be used to create the same pattern over and over again. The punch cards were revolutionary because they allowed they were the first creation that allowed a machine to follow an algorithm. Jacquard's punch cards helped spark the computer revolution, and the idea of punch cards was used by many computer scientist's in the future.

References

http://library.thinkquest.org/C0126120/jacquard.htm

http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/jacquard.htm

http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/icons_of_invention/technology/1820-1880/IC.031/

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SCjacquard.htm

http://www.sacklunch.net/biography/J/JosephMarieJacquard_1.html