Joseph Marie Jacquard is a famous inventor of the 17th - 19th centuries. His main invention - the industrial method of fabric production - is of great importance for modern computer science and helped develop the first prototype of an electronic computer.
Joseph Marie Jacquard: Brief Biography
F. M. Jacquard (1754 - 1834) is famous for the invention of the 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 type foundry, a company that produces metal plates with type and ink for printing.
However, after the death of his father, the 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 took on any job and repaired many different looms in an attempt to distract himself from his grief.
In 1790, Joseph Marie Jacquard made the first attempt to createindustrial machine. Lyon then, as now, was a busy industrial area in France, with many trade routes from ports deeper into the continent. The inventor meets autonomous machines by Jacques de Vaucanson, who has opened his own production in the city. Witty and elegant mechanical toys in the form of animals and people amazed Jacquard and helped to correct the shortcomings of his own invention.
Recognition of Jacquard's merits 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 urgent, so the industrial machine was just what we needed.
Joseph Marie Jacquard's achievements were noted by Napoleon I, the weaver was given a considerable pension from the state and given the right to collect cash contributions in his favor from each invented French loom. In 1840, the noble inhabitants of Lyon erected a monument in honor of the inventor who glorified the city.
Jacquard fabric
Joseph's looms and the resulting fabric were named jacquard in honor of the creator. Jacquard had an unusually wide application both in past times and now. Outerwear, extraordinarily beautiful dresses, as well as covers and upholstery for furniture are made from this fabric.
The rapports of jacquard fabric patterns contain at least 24 threads, weaving unusually complex and beautiful patterns. Materials can be combined during creation, which makes it possible to create very interesting effects on finished products. Rococo and baroque home decor is nearly impossible without chic jacquard curtains, upholstery and cushions.
The complexity of making reports made the work of craftsmen and the finished fabric incredibly expensive, only aristocrats and the rich could afford such a luxury. Dresses and outfits made of jacquard still amaze with the beauty of their pattern; for kings and close aristocrats, gold and silver threads were used in weaving.
Dense 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 dresses, rough and dense - for upholstery and covers, or even when creating carpets.
Jacquard loom
The main difference between the loom 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. The position of the threads was controlled by simple cards made of thick paper - perforated prisms. Punched cards could control up to 100 threads and had the appropriate length.
Prisms of the report were stitched into one working tape and changed as needed by the machine operator. The machine itself is incredibly simple and yet effective. It necessarily includes a board-frame for fabric andher cords, a large set of hooks and knives, needles and pattern charts for each thread. All threads pass through the holes of the long board for even distribution. The hooks catch the spindle and can take it out of the range of the blades. The warp threads are stretched horizontally at the bottom of the device.
The needles move along the slots in the program cards. They have punched and non-cut areas, the operator can set the rocking and rotational movements of the prisms, along which the control needles move. The non-pierced areas of the cards retract the needles and remove the hook from the spindle, while the active needle causes the hook to move the required thread.
Elegant solution
The jacquard loom is an outstanding example of a computer controlled machine, invented before the term "binary code" was coined. Punched cards change the position of the needle from "active" to "inactive" and embody the principle of operation of all computer technology known to all modern computer scientists - "zero / one".
Joseph's punched cards were used for their intended purpose much later, and his invention became the first programmable device and for a long time determined the direction of further development of industrial technology around the world.
What didn't the inventor know about?
The invention of the industrial loom was a real breakthrough not only for contemporaries, but also brought the creation of autonomous computing technology closer to subsequent generations. About the real meaningJoseph Marie Jacquard apparently had no idea what he had invented.
However, it was the 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 truly unique, because the theoretical foundations of the concept of an algorithm and the description of the simplest principles of programming were made only during the Second World War by Alan Turing. The scientist developed his abstract machine to crack secret military ciphers, like the code of the famous Enigma.
