| Description |
xi, 302 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 20 cm |
| Content |
text txt |
| Media |
unmediated n |
| Carrier |
volume nc |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-293) and index. |
| Contents |
The engraving that wasn't -- A better mousetrap -- The son of a master-weaver -- The Emperor's new clothes -- From weaving to computing -- The difference engine -- The analytical engine -- A question of faith and funding -- The lady who loved the Jacquard loom -- A crisis with the American census -- The first Jacquard looms that wove information -- The birth of IBM -- The Thomas Watson phenomenon -- Howard Aiken dreams of a computer -- IBM and the Harvard Mark I -- Weaving at the speed of light -- The future. |
| Summary |
Examines how the Jacquard loom kick-started a process of scientific evolution which would lead directly to the development of the modern computer. The invention of Jacquard's loom in 1804 enabled the master silk-weavers of Lyons to weave fabrics 25 times faster than had previously been possible. The device used punched cards, which stored instructions for weaving whatever pattern or design was required. These cards can very reasonably be described as the world's first computer programs. In this engaging and delightful book, James Essinger reveals a plethora of extraordinary links between the nineteenth-century world of weaving and today's computer age: for example, modern computer graphics displays are based on exactly the same principles as those employed in Jacquard's special woven tableaux. Jacquard's Web also introduces some of the most colourful and interesting characters in the history of science and technology: the modest but exceptionally dedicated Jacquard himself, the brilliant but temperamental Victorian polymath Charles Babbage, who dreamt of a cogwheel computer operated using Jacquard cards, and the imaginative and perceptive Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's only legitimate daughter. |
| Subject(s) |
Jacquard, Joseph-Marie, 1752-1834.
|
|
Computers -- History.
|
|
Jacquard knitting machines -- History.
|
|
Information technology -- History.
|
|
