Maggie's Farm

Interesting factoid - it is the Jacquard head (or card control) that makes the loom, not the loom itself. In fact, most Jacquard heads were used on Dornier looms which were made in Germany and Slater looms in New England. So in a sense, the Jacquard concept was originally "open source". :>)

Charles Babbage recognized the ability of punch card instructions and planned to use the cards to store programs in his Analytical engine. He eventually settled on paper tape. Which, curiously enough, was also employed in Jaquard heads.

From there it was only a matter of time until Herman Hollerith developed the computational and data processing abilities of the punch card with the Hollerith Card.

Well, I must confess - the only reason I know that is my wife's Uncle worked for Stevens Mills as a dye maker (as in color - it's a real art that has since been lost) and one time I got to tour a Stevens Mill in Westerly, RI where he had his lab. Being an engineer with a degree in math, I was interested in how they controlled the weaving of complex patterns and received the whole history of the Jacquard control head.

What fascinates me are the connections between things like this and modern day manufacturing. The BBC did a ten episode series called "Connections" with James Burke which I watched religiously. Most of Burke's "connections" were BS, but some were believable and made perfect sense.