What is Jacquard's loom?

Answer 1

The Jacquard loom is a mechanical loom which was invented in1801 by Joseph Marie Jacquard. The loom is controlled by cards with punched holes, and creates complex woven textile patterns such as brocade, damask, etc. It was the first machine to use punched cards to control a series of operations and the operator could change the pattern of the weave by changing to different cards. Each hole location on a card corresponds to a hook which can either be raised or lowered depending on whether the hole is punched out left solid. The hook raises or lowers a thread harness, which carries and guides the warp thread so that the weft will either lie above or below it, the sequence of raised and lowered threads creating the pattern. Modern jacquard looms are controlled by computers instead of punched cards, and may have thousands of hooks.

Answer 2

The Jacquard loom was invented because Jacquard thought that a powered loom with a instructions on paper tape could run many times faster than a loom operated by a person. It did. (Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, created the sub loop for the Jacquard loom. Paper tape found many uses in communications and computers. Sub loops are an important part of computer programming.)