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The Jacquard machine () is a device fitted to a
loom A loom is a device used to weave cloth and tapestry. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. The precise shape of the loom and its mechanics may vary, but th ...
that simplifies the process of manufacturing
textiles Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not the ...
with such complex patterns as
brocade Brocade is a class of richly decorative shuttle-woven fabrics, often made in colored silks and sometimes with gold and silver threads. The name, related to the same root as the word "broccoli", comes from Italian ''broccato'' meaning "embos ...
,
damask Damask (; ar, دمشق) is a reversible patterned fabric of silk, wool, linen, cotton, or synthetic fibers, with a pattern formed by weaving. Damasks are woven with one warp yarn and one weft yarn, usually with the pattern in warp-faced satin ...
and matelassé. The resulting ensemble of the loom and Jacquard machine is then called a Jacquard loom. The machine was patented by
Joseph Marie Jacquard Joseph Marie Charles ''dit'' (called or nicknamed) Jacquard (; 7 July 1752 – 7 August 1834) was a French weaver and merchant. He played an important role in the development of the earliest programmable loom (the " Jacquard loom"), which in tu ...
in 1804, based on earlier inventions by the Frenchmen
Basile Bouchon Basile Bouchon () was a textile worker in the silk center in Lyon who invented a way to control a loom with a perforated paper tape in 1725. The son of an organ maker, Bouchon partially automated the tedious setting up process of the drawloom in ...
(1725), Jean Baptiste Falcon (1728), and
Jacques Vaucanson Jacques de Vaucanson (; February 24, 1709 – November 21, 1782) was a French inventor and artist who built the first all-metal lathe which was very important to the Industrial Revolution. The lathe is known as the mother of machine tools, as it ...
(1740). The machine was controlled by a "chain of cards"; a number of
punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...
s laced together into a continuous sequence. Multiple rows of holes were punched on each card, with one complete card corresponding to one row of the design. Both the Jacquard process and the necessary loom attachment are named after their inventor. This mechanism is probably one of the most important
weaving Weaving is a method of textile production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. Other methods are knitting, crocheting, felting, and braiding or plaiting. The longitudinal th ...
innovations as Jacquard shedding made possible the automatic production of unlimited varieties of complex pattern weaving. The term "Jacquard" is not specific or limited to any particular loom, but rather refers to the added control mechanism that automates the patterning. The process can also be used for patterned knitwear and machine-knitted textiles such as
jersey Jersey ( , ; nrf, Jèrri, label=Jèrriais ), officially the Bailiwick of Jersey (french: Bailliage de Jersey, links=no; Jèrriais: ), is an island country and self-governing Crown Dependencies, Crown Dependency near the coast of north-west F ...
s. This use of replaceable
punched cards A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to d ...
to control a sequence of operations is considered an important step in the
history of computing hardware The history of computing hardware covers the developments from early simple devices to aid calculation to modern day computers. Before the 20th century, most calculations were done by humans. The first aids to computation were purely mechan ...
, having inspired
Charles Babbage Charles Babbage (; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer. Babbage is considered ...
's
Analytical Engine The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer designed by English mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's difference engine, which was a des ...
.


History

Traditionally, figured designs were made on a
drawloom A loom is a device used to weave cloth and tapestry. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. The precise shape of the loom and its mechanics may vary, but t ...
. The
heddle A heddle is an integral part of a loom. Each thread in the warp passes through a heddle,"Weaving." ''The Encyclopædia Britannica''. 11th ed. 1911. which is used to separate the warp threads for the passage of the weft."Heddle." ''The Oxford ...
s with warp ends to be pulled up were manually selected by a second operator, the draw boy, not the weaver. The work was slow and labour-intensive, and the complexity of the pattern was limited by practical factor. The first prototype of a Jacquard-type loom was made in the second half of the 15th century by an
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...
weaver from
Calabria , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...
, Jean le Calabrais, who was invited to
Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of t ...
by
Louis XI Louis XI (3 July 1423 – 30 August 1483), called "Louis the Prudent" (french: le Prudent), was King of France from 1461 to 1483. He succeeded his father, Charles VII. Louis entered into open rebellion against his father in a short-lived revol ...
. He introduced a new kind of machine which was able to work the yarns faster and more precisely. Over the years, improvements to the loom were ongoing. An improvement of the draw loom took place in 1725, when
Basile Bouchon Basile Bouchon () was a textile worker in the silk center in Lyon who invented a way to control a loom with a perforated paper tape in 1725. The son of an organ maker, Bouchon partially automated the tedious setting up process of the drawloom in ...
introduced the principle of applying a perforated band of paper. A continuous roll of paper was punched by hand, in sections, each of which represented one lash or tread, and the length of the roll was determined by the number of shots in each repeat of pattern. The Jacquard machine then evolved from this approach. Joseph Marie Jacquard saw that a
mechanism Mechanism may refer to: * Mechanism (engineering), rigid bodies connected by joints in order to accomplish a desired force and/or motion transmission *Mechanism (biology), explaining how a feature is created *Mechanism (philosophy), a theory that ...
could be developed for the production of sophisticated patterns. He possibly combined mechanical elements of other inventors, but certainly innovated. His machine was generally similar to
Vaucanson Jacques de Vaucanson (; February 24, 1709 – November 21, 1782) was a French inventor and artist who built the first all-metal lathe which was very important to the Industrial Revolution. The lathe is known as the mother of machine tools, as i ...
's arrangement, but he made use of Jean-Baptiste Falcon's individual
pasteboard Card stock, also called cover stock and pasteboard, is paper that is thicker and more durable than normal writing and printing paper, but thinner and more flexible than other forms of paperboard. Card stock is often used for business cards, p ...
cards and his square prism (or card "cylinder"): he is credited with having fully perforated each of its four sides, replacing Vaucanson's perforated "barrel". Jacquard's machine contained eight rows of needles and uprights, where Vaucanson had a double row. This modification enabled him to increase the figuring capacity of the machine. In his first machine, he supported the harness by knotted cords, which he elevated by a single trap board. One of the chief advantages claimed for the Jacquard machine was that unlike previous damask-weaving machines, in which the figuring shed was usually drawn once for every four shots, with the new apparatus, it could be drawn on every shot, thus producing a fabric with greater definition of outline. Jacquard's invention had a deep influence on
Charles Babbage Charles Babbage (; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer. Babbage is considered ...
. In that respect, he is viewed by some authors as a precursor of modern
computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, e ...
technology.


Principles of operation

On the diagram, the cards are fastened into a continuous chain (1) which passes over a square box. At each quarter rotation a new card is presented to the Jacquard head which represents one row (one "pick" of the shuttle carrying the
weft Warp and weft are the two basic components used in weaving to turn thread or yarn into fabric. The lengthwise or longitudinal warp yarns are held stationary in tension on a frame or loom while the transverse weft (sometimes woof) is draw ...
). The box swings from the right to the position shown and presses against the control rods (2). Where there is a hole the rod passes through the card and is unmoved whereas if the hole is not punched the rod is pushed to the left. Each rod acts upon a hook (3). When the rod is pushed in, the hook moves out of position to the left, a rod that is not pushed in leaves its hook in place. A beam (4) then rises under the hooks and those hooks in the rest location are raised; the hooks that have been displaced are not moved by the beam. Each hook can have multiple cords (5). The cords pass through a guide(6) and are attached to their
heddle A heddle is an integral part of a loom. Each thread in the warp passes through a heddle,"Weaving." ''The Encyclopædia Britannica''. 11th ed. 1911. which is used to separate the warp threads for the passage of the weft."Heddle." ''The Oxford ...
(7) and a return weight (8). The heddles raise the
warp Warp, warped or warping may refer to: Arts and entertainment Books and comics * WaRP Graphics, an alternative comics publisher * ''Warp'' (First Comics), comic book series published by First Comics based on the play ''Warp!'' * Warp (comics), a ...
to create the
shed A shed is typically a simple, single-story roofed structure that is used for hobbies, or as a workshop in a back garden or on an allotment. Sheds vary considerably in their size and complexity of construction, from simple open-sided ones de ...
through which the shuttle carrying the weft will pass. A loom with a 400 hook head might have four threads connected to each hook, resulting in a fabric that is 1600
warp Warp, warped or warping may refer to: Arts and entertainment Books and comics * WaRP Graphics, an alternative comics publisher * ''Warp'' (First Comics), comic book series published by First Comics based on the play ''Warp!'' * Warp (comics), a ...
ends wide with four repeats of the weave going across. The term "Jacquard loom" is somewhat inaccurate. It is the "Jacquard head" that adapts to a great many
dobby loom A dobby loom, or dobbie loom, is a type of floor loom that controls all the warp threads using a device called a dobby. Dobbies can produce more complex fabric designs than tappet looms but are limited in comparison to Jacquard looms. Dobby lo ...
s that allow the weaving machine to then create the intricate patterns often seen in Jacquard weaving. Jacquard-driven looms, although relatively common in the textile industry, are not as ubiquitous as dobby looms which are usually faster and much cheaper to operate. However, dobby looms are not capable of producing so many different weaves from one
warp Warp, warped or warping may refer to: Arts and entertainment Books and comics * WaRP Graphics, an alternative comics publisher * ''Warp'' (First Comics), comic book series published by First Comics based on the play ''Warp!'' * Warp (comics), a ...
. Modern jacquard machines are controlled by computers in place of the original punched cards and can have thousands of hooks. The threading of a Jacquard machine is so labor-intensive that many looms are threaded only once. Subsequent
warp Warp, warped or warping may refer to: Arts and entertainment Books and comics * WaRP Graphics, an alternative comics publisher * ''Warp'' (First Comics), comic book series published by First Comics based on the play ''Warp!'' * Warp (comics), a ...
s are then tied into the existing warp with the help of a knotting robot which ties each new thread on individually. Even for a small loom with only a few thousand warp ends the process of re-threading can take days.


Mechanical Jacquard devices

Originally the Jacquard machines were
mechanical Mechanical may refer to: Machine * Machine (mechanical), a system of mechanisms that shape the actuator input to achieve a specific application of output forces and movement * Mechanical calculator, a device used to perform the basic operations of ...
, and the fabric design was stored in a series of
punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...
s which were joined to form a continuous chain. The Jacquards often were small and only independently controlled a relatively few warp ends. This required a number of repeats across the loom width. Larger capacity machines, or the use of multiple machines, allowed greater control, with fewer repeats, and hence larger designs could be woven across the loom width. A
factory A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. T ...
must choose looms and shedding mechanisms to suit its commercial requirements. As a rule the more warp control required the greater the expense. So it is not economical to purchase Jacquard machines if one can make do with a dobby mechanism. As well as the capital expense, the Jacquard machines are more costly to maintain as they are complex and require higher skilled personnel; an expensive design system is required to prepare the designs for the loom, and possibly a card-cutting machine. Weaving is more costly since Jacquard mechanisms are more likely to produce faults than dobby or cam shedding. Also, the looms will not run as quickly and down-time will increase because it takes time to change the continuous chain of cards when a design changes. For these reasons it is best to weave larger batches with mechanical Jacquards.


Electronic Jacquard machines

It is recorded that in 1855, a Frenchman adapted the Jacquard mechanism to a system by which it could be worked by electro-magnets. There was significant interest, but trials were not successful, and the development was soon forgotten. Bonas Textile Machinery NV launched the first successful electronic Jacquard at ITMA
Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
in 1983. Although the machines were initially small, modern technology has allowed Jacquard machine capacity to increase significantly, and single end warp control can extend to more than 10,000 warp ends. That avoids the need for repeats and symmetrical designs and allows almost infinite versatility. The computer-controlled machines significantly reduce the down time associated with changing punched paper designs, thus allowing smaller batch sizes. However, electronic Jacquards are costly and may not be required in a factory weaving large batch sizes, and smaller designs. The larger machines allowing single end warp control are very expensive, and can only be justified where great versatility is required, or very specialized design requirements need to be met. For example, they are an ideal tool to increase the ability and stretch the versatility of the niche linen Jacquard weavers who remain active in Europe and the West, while most of the large batch commodity weaving has moved to low cost areas.
Linen Linen () is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant. Linen is very strong, absorbent, and dries faster than cotton. Because of these properties, linen is comfortable to wear in hot weather and is valued for use in garments. It also ...
products associated with Jacquard weaving are linen damask napery, Jacquard apparel fabrics and damask bed linen. Jacquard weaving uses all sorts of fibers and blends of fibers, and it is used in the production of fabrics for many end uses. Jacquard weaving can also be used to create fabrics that have a Matelassé or a
brocade Brocade is a class of richly decorative shuttle-woven fabrics, often made in colored silks and sometimes with gold and silver threads. The name, related to the same root as the word "broccoli", comes from Italian ''broccato'' meaning "embos ...
pattern. Research is under way to develop layered and shaped items as reinforcing components for structures made from
composite material A composite material (also called a composition material or shortened to composite, which is the common name) is a material which is produced from two or more constituent materials. These constituent materials have notably dissimilar chemical or ...
s.


The woven silk prayer book

A pinnacle of production using a Jacquard machine is a prayer book, woven in silk. The book's title is . All 58 pages of the prayer book were made of silk, woven using a Jacquard machine, using black and gray thread. The pages have elaborate borders with text and pictures of saints. It is estimated that 200,000 to 500,000 punch cards were necessary to encode the pages, at 160 threads per cm (400 threads per inch). It was issued in 1886 and 1887, in Lyon, France. It was publicly displayed at the 1889 ''Exposition Universelle'' (World's Fair). It was designed by R.P.J. Hervier, woven by J.A. Henry and published by A. Roux. It took 2 years and almost 50 trials to get correct. An estimated 50 or 60 copies were produced.


Importance in computing

The Jacquard head used replaceable
punched cards A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to d ...
to control a sequence of operations. It is considered an important step in the
history of computing hardware The history of computing hardware covers the developments from early simple devices to aid calculation to modern day computers. Before the 20th century, most calculations were done by humans. The first aids to computation were purely mechan ...
. The ability to change the pattern of the loom's weave by simply changing cards was an important conceptual precursor to the development of
computer programming Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as ana ...
and data entry.
Charles Babbage Charles Babbage (; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer. Babbage is considered ...
knew of Jacquard machines and planned to use cards to store programs in his
Analytical Engine The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer designed by English mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's difference engine, which was a des ...
. In the late 19th century,
Herman Hollerith Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was a German-American statistician, inventor, and businessman who developed an electromechanical tabulating machine The tabulating machine was an electromechanical machine designed t ...
took the idea of using punched cards to store information a step further when he created a punched card tabulating machine which he used to input data for the 1890 U.S. Census. A large data processing industry using punched-card technology was developed in the first half of the twentieth centurydominated initially by the International Business Machine corporation (IBM) with its line of
unit record equipment Starting at the end of the nineteenth century, well before the advent of electronic computers, data processing was performed using electromechanical machines collectively referred to as unit record equipment, electric accounting machines (EAM) o ...
. The cards were used for data, however, with programming done by
plugboard A plugboard or control panel (the term used depends on the application area) is an array of jacks or sockets (often called hubs) into which patch cords can be inserted to complete an electrical circuit. Control panels are sometimes used to di ...
s. Some early computers, such as the 1944
IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator The Harvard Mark I, or IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC), was a general-purpose electromechanical computer used in the war effort during the last part of World War II. One of the first programs to run on the Mark I was init ...
(Harvard Mark I) received program instructions from a paper tape punched with holes, similar to Jacquard's string of cards. Later computers executed programs from higher-speed memory, though cards were commonly used to load the programs into memory. Punched cards remained in use in computing up until the mid-1980s.


Examples

File:Hand-driven-jacquard-loom.jpg, Austrian Jacquard
handloom A loom is a device used to weave cloth and tapestry. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. The precise shape of the loom and its mechanics may vary, but t ...
, end of 19th century, National Museum of textile Industry,
Sliven Sliven ( bg, Сливен ) is the eighth-largest city in Bulgaria and the administrative and industrial centre of Sliven Province and municipality in Northern Thrace. Sliven is famous for its heroic Haiduts who fought against the Ottoman Turk ...
,
Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedon ...
Image:Jacquard.loom.hooks.jpg, Close-up view of comber board, harness, mails, weights (Lingoes) and warp with 1040 ends File:Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin February 2008 0013.JPG,
Punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...
s in use in a Jacquard loom.
German Museum of Technology (German Museum of Technology) in Berlin, Germany is a museum of science and technology, and exhibits a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The museum's main emphasis originally was on rail transport, but today it also features e ...
,
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
File:Textile-Shuttle.jpg, Weaving shuttle on a jacquard sample Image:loom.jpg, Punched card loom mechanism in silk-weaving workshop; Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India Image:weaver.jpg, Weaver in a silk-weaving workshop; Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India Image:Jacquard.loom.cards.jpg, Close-up view of the 8 × 26 hole punched cards—one card per pick (weft) in the fabric File:JacquardLoomsSAFALodzPoland.jpg, Jacquard looms in the Textile Department of the Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts in
Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of canti ...
,
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
. File:JacquardWeavingPoland.jpg, Weaving on a jacquard loom with a
flying shuttle The flying shuttle was one of the key developments in the industrialization of weaving during the early Industrial Revolution. It allowed a single weaver to weave much wider fabrics, and it could be mechanized, allowing for automatic machine l ...
at the Textile Department of the Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, Poland. File:PunchingJacquardCardPoland.jpg, Following the pattern, holes are punched in the appropriate places on a jacquard card at the Department of Textile Art at Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, Poland. File:Morris Dove and Rose Detail.jpg, Detail of ''Dove and Rose'' jacquard-woven silk and wool
double cloth Double cloth or double weave (also doublecloth, double-cloth, doubleweave) is a kind of woven textile in which two or more sets of warps and one or more sets of weft or filling yarns are interconnected to form a two-layered cloth.Kadolph, Sara ...
furnishing textile, designed by
William Morris William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, printer, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He ...
File:Harvard Mark I program tape.agr.jpg, Punched paper tape used to instruct the 1944 Harvard Mark I computer File:WLANL - jpa2003 - Jaquardweefgetouw 03.jpg, Detail of Jaquard loom at TextielMuseum Tilburg File:Masson Mills WTM 13 Hattersley Jacquard 5977.JPG, Four Hattersley looms with the distinctive Jacquard head File:DMM 29263ab Jacquardwebstuhl.jpg, Carpet loom with Jacquard apparatus by Carl Engel, around 1860.


See also

*
Thomas Ferguson & Co Ltd Thomas Ferguson Irish Linen is the last remaining of the old established Irish linen Jacquard weavers in Ireland. Situated in Banbridge, Northern Ireland it has been weaving since 1854. The Company, bears the name of its founder, Thomas Ferguson ...
, Jacquard weaver *
Dobby loom A dobby loom, or dobbie loom, is a type of floor loom that controls all the warp threads using a device called a dobby. Dobbies can produce more complex fabric designs than tappet looms but are limited in comparison to Jacquard looms. Dobby lo ...


Notes


References


Sources

* * * *


External links

*Posselt, Emanuel A. (1892
''The Jacquard machine analyzed and explained: the preparation of Jacquard cards and practical hints to learners of Jacquard designing''
– digital facsimile from the
Linda Hall Library The Linda Hall Library is a privately endowed American library of science, engineering and technology located in Kansas City, Missouri, sitting "majestically on a urban arboretum." It is the "largest independently funded public library of scien ...

CEMATEX
European Committee of Textile Machinery Manufacturers (and owners of the ITMA exhibition). {{Weaving Weaving Textile machinery History of technology Weaving equipment 1804 introductions French inventions