The Jacquard Loom: A Driver of the Industrial
The Jacquard Loom: A Driver of the Industrial
THE INSTITUTEThis month The Institute is focusing on how technology is transforming the garment industry. The
electronic Jacquard loom was the
first loom that automatically created complex textile patterns. This led to the mass production of cloth with intricate
designs.
Joseph Marie Charles Jacquard of France was born into a family of weavers in 1752. He received no formal schooling but
tinkered with ways to improve the mechanical textile looms of the day.
At that time, two people were needed on each loom. A skilled weaver and an assistant, or draw boy, chose by hand which
warps (the lengthwise threads held under tension on the loom) to pull up so the weft (the thread inserted at right angles)
could be pulled through the warps to create a pattern.
At an industrial exhibition in Paris in 1801, Jacquard demonstrated something truly remarkable: a loom in which a series
of cards with punched holes (one card for each row of the design) automatically created complex textile patterns. The draw
boy was no longer needed. Patterns that had been painstaking to produce and prone to error could now be mass-produced quickly
and flawlessly, once programmed and punched on the cards.
The government of France soon nationalized the loom (or considered it government property) and compensated Jacquard with
a pension to support him while he continued to innovate. He also was paid a royalty for each machine sold. It took Jacquard
several more years to perfect the device and make it commercially successful.
The social and psychological impact of a machine that could replace human labor was immense.
HOW IT WORKED
Jacquard did not invent a whole new loom but a head that attaches to the loom and allows the weaving machine to create
intricate patterns. Thus, any loom that uses the attachment is called a Jacquard loom.
The state-of the art loom at that time was one in which the harnesses holding the threads were raised or lowered by foot
pedals on a treadle, leaving the weaver free to operate the machine with his hands. The Jacquard loom, in contrast, was
controlled by a chain of punch cards laced together in a sequence. Multiple rows of holes were punched on each card, with one
complete card corresponding to one row of the design. Chains of cards allowed sequences of any length to be constructed, not
limited by the cards’ size.
Each hole position in the card corresponded to a hook, which could either be raised or lowered depending on whether the
hole was punched. The hook raised or lowered the harness that carried and guided the thread. The sequence of raised and
lowered threads created the pattern. A hook could be attached to a number of threads to create a continuous, intricate
design.Already in the late 18th century, workers throughout Europe were upset with the increasing mechanization of their
trades. Jacquard’s loom was fiercely opposed by silk-weavers in Paris who rightly saw it would put many of them out of work.
In England, where an anti-industry workers movement was already well developed, news of the Jacquard loom fostered momentum
for the Luddite movement, whose textile workers protested the new technology. Although the French looms did not arrive in
England until the early 1820s, news of their existence helped intensify violent protests. People smashed the machines and
killed textile mill owners; the authorities violently suppressed the protests. To this day, people who resist new technology
are called Luddites.
But the
high speed
electronic Jacquard loom was too good to be ignored. Ultimately, it became standard throughout the industrializing
world for weaving luxury fabrics, replaced by the dobby loom in the 1840s. In a dobby, a chain of bars with pegs, rather than
foot pedals, is used to select and move the harness. Even then, parts of Jacquard’s control system could be adapted to the
dobby loom.Perhaps what is most interesting about the Jacquard loom was its afterlife. When computer pioneer Charles Babbage,
a British mathematician, envisioned an “analytical engine” in 1837 that would essentially become the first general-purpose
computer, he decided that the computer’s input would be stored on punch cards, modeled after Jacquard’s system. Although
Babbage never built his engine, he and his work were well known to the mathematics community and eventually influenced the
field that came to be computer science.THE INSTITUTEThis month The Institute is focusing on how technology is transforming
the garment industry. The Jacquard Loom was the first loom that automatically created complex textile patterns. This led to
the mass production of cloth with intricate designs.
Joseph Marie Charles Jacquard of France was born into a family of weavers in 1752. He received no formal schooling but
tinkered with ways to improve the mechanical textile looms of the day.
At that time, two people were needed on each loom. A skilled weaver and an assistant, or draw boy, chose by hand which
warps (the lengthwise threads held under tension on the loom) to pull up so the weft (the thread inserted at right angles)
could be pulled through the warps to create a pattern.
At an industrial exhibition in Paris in 1801, Jacquard demonstrated something truly remarkable: a loom in which a series
of cards with punched holes (one card for each row of the design) automatically created complex textile patterns. The draw
boy was no longer needed. Patterns that had been painstaking to produce and prone to error could now be mass-produced quickly
and flawlessly, once programmed and punched on the cards.
The government of France soon nationalized the loom (or considered it government property) and compensated Jacquard with
a pension to support him while he continued to innovate. He also was paid a royalty for each machine sold. It took Jacquard
several more years to perfect the device and make it commercially successful.
The social and psychological impact of a machine that could replace human labor was immense.
HOW IT WORKED
Jacquard did not invent a whole new loom but a head that attaches to the loom and allows the weaving machine to create
intricate patterns. Thus, any loom that uses the attachment is called a Jacquard loom.
The state-of the art loom at that time was one in which the harnesses holding the threads were raised or lowered by foot
pedals on a treadle, leaving the weaver free to operate the machine with his hands. The Jacquard loom, in contrast, was
controlled by a chain of punch cards laced together in a sequence. Multiple rows of holes were punched on each card, with one
complete card corresponding to one row of the design. Chains of cards allowed sequences of any length to be constructed, not
limited by the cards’ size.
Each hole position in the card corresponded to a hook, which could either be raised or lowered depending on whether the
hole was punched. The hook raised or lowered the harness that carried and guided the thread. The sequence of raised and
lowered threads created the pattern. A hook could be attached to a number of threads to create a continuous, intricate
design.
Herman Hollerith\u2019s punched-card computer, invented in the early 1880s, was inspired by the Jacquard loomHerman
Hollerith’s punched-card computer, invented in the early 1880s, was inspired by the Jacquard loom PHOTO: HULTON
ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES
FIERCE OPPOSITION
Already in the late 18th century, workers throughout Europe were upset with the increasing mechanization of their trades.
Jacquard’s loom was fiercely opposed by silk-weavers in Paris who rightly saw it would put many of them out of work. In
England, where an anti-industry workers movement was already well developed, news of the
high speed electronic Jacquard loom for weaving
machine fostered momentum for the Luddite movement, whose textile workers protested the new technology. Although the
French looms did not arrive in England until the early 1820s, news of their existence helped intensify violent protests.
People smashed the machines and killed textile mill owners; the authorities violently suppressed the protests. To this day,
people who resist new technology are called Luddites.
But the Jacquard loom was too good to be ignored. Ultimately, it became standard throughout the industrializing world for
weaving luxury fabrics, replaced by the dobby loom in the 1840s. In a dobby, a chain of bars with pegs, rather than foot
pedals, is used to select and move the harness. Even then, parts of Jacquard’s control system could be adapted to the dobby
loom.
A LONG LEGACY
Perhaps what is most interesting about the Jacquard loom was its afterlife. When computer pioneer Charles Babbage, a
British mathematician, envisioned an “analytical engine” in 1837 that would essentially become the first general-purpose
computer, he decided that the computer’s input would be stored on punch cards, modeled after Jacquard’s system. Although
Babbage never built his engine, he and his work were well known to the mathematics community and eventually influenced the
field that came to be computer science.
In the mid-1880s, the U.S. Census Bureau began to experiment with ways to automate the way it was assessing the
population of the United States and processing the answers to the questions survey takers asked each household. The data from
the 1880 census was overwhelming; it took eight years to compile and process. Engineer Herman Hollerith, who was on the
bureau’s technical staff, felt he could improve the process. He got busy and, in 1884, filed a patent for an
electromechanical device that rapidly read information encoded by punching holes on a paper tape or a set of cards. In 1889
Hollerith’s newly formed Tabulating Machine Co. was chosen to process the 1890 census. The company was decidedly successful;
data from the 1890 census was compiled in only one year. The 1890 population of the United States was put at 62,947,714
people.
Apparently, Hollerith based his concept on the
electronic Jacquard loom machine. Historians disagree, however, as to whether he also was
influenced by Babbage’s work.
The Tabulating Machine Co. eventually became IBM. (Some IEEE members undoubtedly remember using IBM punch cards into the
1970s.)
Thus, the computer industry—which became a field of cutting-edge innovation—was affected by at least two streams of
influence from the Jacquard loom. It is only fitting and fair that computing is now generating innovation in the textile
industry with such creations as wearables, 3-D printed clothing, and digital industrial knitting machines. Before even the
telegraph, innovation in textile technology was one of the “engines” (along with steam power and iron production) that
drove the Industrial Revolution.
When Joseph-Marie Jacquard, a French weaver and merchant, patented his invention in 1804, he revolutionised how patterned
cloth could be woven. His Jacquard machine, which built on earlier developments by inventor Jacques de Vaucanson, made it
possible for complex and detailed patterns to be manufactured by unskilled workers in a fraction of the time it took a master
weaver and his assistant working manually.
The spread of Jacquard's invention caused the cost of fashionable, highly sought-after patterned cloth to plummet. It
could now be mass produced, becoming affordable to a wide market of consumers, not only the wealthiest in society.
To weave fabric on a loom, a thread (called the weft) is passed over and under a set of threads (called the warp). It is
this interlacing of threads at right angles to each other that forms cloth. The particular order in which the weft passes
over and under the warp threads determines the pattern that is woven into the fabric.
Before the Jacquard system, a weaver's assistant (known as a draw boy) had to sit atop a loom and manually raise and
lower its warp threads to create patterned cloth. This was a slow and laborious process.
The key to the success of Jacquard's invention was its use of interchangeable cards, upon which small holes were
punched, which held instructions for weaving a pattern. This innovation effectively took over the time-consuming job of the
draw boy.
When fed into the Jacquard mechanism (fitted to the top of the loom), the cards controlled which warp threads should be
raised to allow the weft thread to pass under them. With these punch cards, Jacquard looms could quickly reproduce any
pattern a designer could think up, and replicate it again and again.
First, a designer paints their pattern onto squared paper. A card maker then translates the pattern row by row onto punch
cards. For each square on the paper that has not been painted in, the card maker punches a hole in the card. For each painted
square, no hole is punched.
The cards, each with their own combination of punched holes corresponding to the part of the pattern they represent, are
then laced together, ready to be fed one by one through the Jacquard mechanism fitted at the top of the loom. When a card is
pushed towards a matrix of pins in the Jacquard mechanism, the pins pass through the punched holes, and hooks are
activated to raise their warp threads. Where there are no holes the pins press against the card, stopping the corresponding
hooks from raising their threads.
A shuttle then travels across the loom, carrying the weft thread under the warp threads that have been raised and over
those that have not. This repeating process causes the loom to produce the patterned cloth that the punch cards have
instructed it to create.Manchester engineering companies also began manufacturing Jacquard machinery to supply to the
region's textile mills. Devoge and Co. was established in 1834 and continued producing Jacquard mechanisms until the
1980s.
Jacquard's invention transformed patterned cloth production, but it also represented a revolution in human-machine
interaction in its use of binary code—either punched hole or no punched hole—to instruct a machine (the loom) to carry out
an automated process (weaving).
The
Jacquard needle loom
machine is often considered a predecessor to modern computing because its interchangeable punch cards inspired the
design of early computers.
With his Analytical Engine, Babbage envisaged a machine that could receive instructions from punch cards to carry out
mathematical calculations. His idea was that the punch cards would feed numbers, and instructions about what to do with those
numbers, into the machine.Ada Lovelace took Babbage's idea a step further, proposing that the numbers the engine
manipulated could represent not just quantities, but any data. She saw the potential for computers to be used beyond
mathematical calculation and proposed the idea of what we now know as computer programming.
Unfortunately, the Analytical Engine was never completed, and it was 100 years before Babbage's and Lovelace's
predictions were realised.
However, their work, and the inspiration provided by Jacquard's revolutionary weaving machine, came to underpin the
technological development of the modern computer.