Joseph Marie Jacquard - the famous inventor of the XVII - XIX centuries. His main invention - an industrial method of fabric production - is of great importance for modern computer science and helped to develop the first prototype of an electronic computer.
Joseph Marie Jacquard: A Brief Biography
J. M. Jacquard (1754 - 1834) is known for inventing an industrial loom. The future French inventor was born in Lyon in 1752. As the son of a weaver, Joseph Jacquard was trained by a bookbinder and could work at a foundry - an enterprise engaged in the creation of metal plates with fonts 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 undertook any work and repaired many different looms in an attempt to distract from his grief.
In 1790, Joseph Marie Jacquard made the first attempt to create an industrial machine. Lyon at that time, as now, was a vibrant industrial area of France, through it passed many trade routes 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 struck Jacquard and helped to correct the shortcomings of his own invention.
Recognition of the merits of Jacquard by contemporaries
In 1808, work on a loom was completed. Having become an empire, France could no longer satisfy the needs of a huge, constantly howling army with the help of manual labor. The need for fabrics was vital, so the industrial machine was very welcome.
The achievements of Joseph Marie Jacquard were noted by Napoleon I, a weaver was laid a considerable pension from the state, and the right was given to collect deductions in his favor from each machine of France of an invented design. In 1840, the noble inhabitants 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 was unusually widely used both in past times and now. From this fabric make outerwear, unusually beautiful dresses, as well as covers and upholstery for furniture.
Rapport patterns of jacquard fabric contain a minimum of 24 threads, weaving unusually complex and beautiful patterns. When creating materials, you can combine them, which makes it possible to create very interesting effects on finished products. Making home interiors in the Rococo and Baroque style is almost impossible without chic jacquard curtains, upholstery and pillows.
The complexity of producing reports made the work of the masters and the finished fabric incredibly expensive, only aristocrats and rich people could afford such luxury. Dresses and dresses made of jacquard are still striking in the beauty of their pattern; 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 threads, the denser and stronger the fabric itself. Thin and soft jacquard is used for outfits, rough and dense - for upholstery of furniture and covers, or even when creating carpets.
Jacquard loom
The main difference between 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. Plain paper cards — perforated prisms — controlled the position of the threads. Punch cards could control up to 100 threads and had the appropriate length.
The prisms of the report were sewn into one working tape and changed as necessary by the machine operator. The device 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 cards for each thread. All threads pass through the holes of a long board for even distribution. Hooks cling to the spindle and can carry it beyond the action of the blades. Warp threads are pulled at the bottom of the device in a horizontal direction.
Needles move through slots in software maps. They have cut and not cut areas, the operator can specify the oscillating and rotational movements of the prisms along which the control needles move. The uncut areas of the cards divert the needles and remove the hook from the spindle, while the active needle forces 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” appeared. Punched cards change the position of the needle from “active” to “not active” and embody the principle of operation of all computer technology known to all modern computer scientists - “zero / one”.
Joseph’s punch cards were used for their intended purpose much later, and his invention was the first programmable device and for a long time determined the direction of further development of industrial equipment worldwide.
What did the inventor not guess?
The invention of the industrial loom was a real breakthrough not only for contemporaries, but also brought closer the creation of autonomous computer technology by subsequent generations. Joseph Marie Jacquard apparently did not even know the real meaning of what he had invented.
However, it was simple cardboard weaving control tables that laid down the principle of programming production lines in the future. Joseph Marie Jacquard can be called the first amateur programmer. The practical achievements of the inventor are really unique, because the theoretical foundations of the concept of an algorithm and a description of the simplest programming principles were made only during World War II by Alan Turing. The scientist developed his abstract machine to crack secret military codes, like the code of the famous Enigma.