The Jacquard loom was invented by a woman and that loom was thought to be early computer.... If I could only recall her name and if she wrote..I think she did, but did she write well?
... googling when connection allows, I find she is not credited generally in discussion of the loom... and my books are over at the school.
Popular science on line...
Piecing together this true story of these remarkable links between the silk-weaving loom and the modern computer took me two years of research in five different countries. There is no doubt that it is reasonable to describe computers as simply a form of highly specialised loom. This fact was brilliantly foreshadowed back in 1843 by Charles Babbage’s close friend and confidante Ada Lovelace (1815 – 1852). Ada was the mercurial, brilliand but rather eccentric daughter of the great Romantic poet Lord Byron. She was far-sighted enough to say, in reference to Babbage’s cogwheel computer the Analytical Engine, ‘We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves’. The italics are Ada’s. She liked emphasis.
How right Ada was. And how extraordinary it is that a silk-weaving loom can have given birth to the remarkable age of information technology in which we find ourselves today! Every time you use a computer – no matter what kind of computer – you are essentially weaving at the speed of light.
Popular science on line...
Piecing together this true story of these remarkable links between the silk-weaving loom and the modern computer took me two years of research in five different countries. There is no doubt that it is reasonable to describe computers as simply a form of highly specialised loom. This fact was brilliantly foreshadowed back in 1843 by Charles Babbage’s close friend and confidante Ada Lovelace (1815 – 1852). Ada was the mercurial, brilliand but rather eccentric daughter of the great Romantic poet Lord Byron. She was far-sighted enough to say, in reference to Babbage’s cogwheel computer the Analytical Engine, ‘We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves’. The italics are Ada’s. She liked emphasis.
How right Ada was. And how extraordinary it is that a silk-weaving loom can have given birth to the remarkable age of information technology in which we find ourselves today! Every time you use a computer – no matter what kind of computer – you are essentially weaving at the speed of light.
My error... she did not invent or help invent the loom, just postulated the function could have other applications.
