Energy & Industry / Manufacturing & Construction

Jacquard Loom (Punched Cards)

Jacquard's card-controlled loom (1804) weaves any pattern automatically: the first widely used machine run by a stored program.

Earlier inventors in France had used perforated paper tape and cards to steer looms; Joseph-Marie Jacquard combined them into an attachment that lifts warp threads according to holes in a chain of cards. Changing the cards changes the pattern without touching the machine. Babbage took the idea for his Analytical Engine, and Hollerith's census cards (1890) and punched-tape machine tools followed.