Joseph-Marie Jacquard’s inventive spirit led to the development of an improved loom that not only revolutionized the weaving process in the 19th century, but its technical implications had a major impact on technology in the 20th century. Jacquard was the son of a weaver in Lyon, France. Because his family had little means and he received only a meager education, his father found him employment as a bookbinder. His employer, who gave the boy some very elementary lessons in mathematics, noticed that Jacquard had a real flair for computations and mechanics.
Upon learning that his father was dying, Jacquard returned to the family and took possession of his father’s two looms and became a weaver himself. He became obsessed with improvement of the looms and soon had to sell the family cottage and the looms to get out of debt. In the midst of this turmoil Jacquard married, but his financial situation forced him to leave his wife in Lyons to work making straw bonnets while he moved to Bresse for employment and continued to work on improving his loom concept. The French Revolution interrupted his pursuits, and he joined the Lyonese volunteers against the French army. During the course of the next several years he experienced the death of his son fighting at his side and fled back to Lyon to remain in hiding while his wife continued her hat making. After emerging from his concealment he obtained employment with a manufacturer and at night continued to improve his loom. His employer, upon learning of his interests, advanced him money to modify the loom. Within several months, Jacquard had invented a loom that substituted mechanical power for the hand-labor of the weaver.
In 1801 the loom was displayed at the Exposition of National Industry in Paris and received a bronze medal. His facile mind continued to seek improvements and projects, and his employer provided him with additional funds to pursue them. Soon his work became known to officials of his Department and he received an invitation to the see the Emperor in Paris. After a lengthy interview, an impressed Napoleon provided Jacquard with comfortable lodging in Paris and a workshop to continue his projects. One of the advantages of this arrangement was that Jacquard was able to obtain other machines and inventions to study. One such device was a loom for weaving flowered silk invented by Vaucanson, a noted French inventor who had died in 1782. Jacquard diligently studied the operation of Vaucanson’s loom that had as its essential feature a pierced cylinder whose holes when they revolved regulated the movement of needles that deviated the warp threads to produce a specific design. Jacquard worked to improve the device. He added a series of punch cards to control the sequence of movements and the weaving of patterns and reduce the heavy manual labor component in the process. The result was a machine that permitted weavers to focus on the quality of designs and standardize production. He presented his rich fabric to the Empress Josephine. The result pleased Napoleon, who ordered a number of the looms to be built according to Jacquard’s specifications. In 1806 the French government specified that the Jacquard loom was public property and awarded him an annual pension and a royalty on each machine that was constructed.
Jacquard returned to Lyon and experienced a rude reception. Similar to early British inventors, the weavers of Lyon viewed Jacquard’s loom as a threat to their jobs. It took troops to hold back the angry mob and prevent the confiscation and destruction of his inventory of looms. He was publicly denounced, hanged in effigy, and had one of his looms smashed to bits. At one point, riots broke out and Jacquard himself was dragged through the streets briefly before being rescued. Some British silk makers tried to persuade Jacquard to journey to their homeland for refuge, but he opted to stay in France. They did adopt his loom, an action that forced the Lyon weavers to do the same. To their delight, the Jacquard loom actually increased employment opportunities tenfold. In 1812 it is estimated that France had 11,000 Jacquard looms in operation employing some 60,000 persons, a figure that continued to rise in subsequent years. Jacquard went from being the most scorned man in Lyon to a hero. He continued to perfect his loom. In 1820 he received the French Legion of Honor, and he died at Oullins in 1834. In 1840, the city of Lyon erected a statue in his honor, although his family members drifted into poverty and even had to resort to selling the gold medal bestowed on him by King Louis XVIII.
The Jacquard loom was not only a revolution in the 19th century weaving process, but it also had far-reaching implications. The idea of punch cards that made repetitive tasks easier was a forerunner of the early modern computer technology. Of course, the Jacquard loom did not make computations, but the punch cards that are controlled by humans in reality stored information that was used to create a specific tapestry. It also permitted the same loom and weaver to make a variety of designs. Thus, weaving moved from the domain of the individual to the realm of mass production, at least according to 19th-century standards.
World History
