Jacquard's Web

Jacquard's Web

A new popular science book, published on October 28 by Oxford University Press, traces today's high-tech era directly back to a hand-loom invented in Napoleonic France.

The book, Jacquard's Web, by popular science writer James Essinger, uncovers one of the most extraordinary untold stories of science: how the Jacquard loom, invented in 1804 to weave extremely intricate images and patterns into silk brocade, started a process of technological evolution that has directly resulted in the information age.

In Jacquard's Web, Essinger shows that the loom's invention kick-started a revolution in how complex processes are controlled which ushered in the development of the computer 140 years later. Essinger's take on the story is that the Jacquard loom and the computer are essentially doing the same thing: providing a systematic and repeatable way of managing an extremely complex operational process.

His story is not only about the technological revolution behind the computer, but also about the lives and work of some of the most intriguing and colourful people in the history of science. They include: Joseph-Marie Jacquard, a struggling weaver in Lyons who toiled to invent his loom after returning from fighting in the Revolutionary army; Charles Babbage, the great Victorian scientist and thinker; and the beautiful and witty Ada, Countess of Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter. The twentieth-century portion of the story continues the tale by looking at the work of Herman Hollerith, the German-American inventor who pioneered a new way of dealing with the unprecedented volume of data generated by the 1890 American Census; and Howard Aiken, who built one of the world's very first computers.

Jacquard's Web also devotes two chapters to looking at the story of Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM, and the contribution IBM made to bringing about the computer from mechanical "tabulation' machines that were intimately related to the Jacquard loom. As the book shows, as late as 1960, IBM was making more money from mechanical tabulation machines than it was from computers.

Essinger concludes by bringing the story completely up-to-date with the latest developments in the World Wide Web and the fascinating phenomenon of artificial intelligence.

Doron Swade – the computer scientist and computer historian who headed the team at the London Science Museum which built the first working version of a Babbage Difference Engine in 1991 and the later project to build Babbage's printer for his Difference Engine – says of Jacquard's Web:

"A fine excavation of Jacquard, and a deft handling of the seemingly unlikely link between a weaving loom and modern computing.'

Jacquard's Web was published on October 28 2004 by Oxford University Press. Retail price £14.99. ISBN 0192805770.