Joseph Marie Jacquard (Research)

Joseph Marie Charles (called or nicknamed) Jacquard was born in Lyon, France on the 7^th July 1752 and died in Oullins, Rhone on the 7^th August 1834. He was a French weaver and merchant and played an important role in the development of programmable machines, such as computers.

Jacquard invented the ‘Jacquard Loom’ which is a mechanical loom that has holes punched in pasteboard cards, with each card corresponding to one row of the design. Multiple rows of holes are punched in the cards and the cards that compose the design of the textile are together in order. This method is based on earlier inventions by fellow Frenchmen Basile Bouchon (1725), Jean-Baptiste Falcon (1728) and Jacques Vaucanson (1740).

The Jacquard head used replaceable punched cards to control a sequence of operations. It is seen and considered by many as an important step in the history of computing hardware.

Reference;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Marie_Jacquard

http://history-computer.com/Dreamers/Jacquard.html