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Jacquard Loom

 
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Jacquard loom
 
 
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The Jacquard Loom is a mechanical loom
Loom

A loom is a machine or device for weaving thread or yarn into textiles. Looms can range from very small hand-held frames, to large free-standing hand looms, to huge automatic mechanical devices....
, invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard
Joseph Marie Jacquard

Joseph Marie Charles nicknamed Jacquard was a straw hat maker before becoming a French silk weaver and inventor. He improved on the original punched card design of Jacques de Vaucanson's loom of 1745, to invent the Jacquard loom mechanism in 1804-1805....
 in 1801, that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with complex patterns such as brocade
Brocade

File:Russian brocade.jpgBrocade is a class of richly decorative shuttle fabrics, often made in colored silks and with or without gold and silver threads....
, damask
Damask

Damask is a figured cloth of silk, wool, linen, cotton, or synthetic fibers, with a pattern formed by weaving. Made with one warp and one weft in which, generally, warp-satin and weft sateen weaves interchange....
, and matelasse. The loom is controlled by pasteboard cards with punched holes, each row of which corresponds to one row of the design.






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Jacquard
The Jacquard Loom is a mechanical loom
Loom

A loom is a machine or device for weaving thread or yarn into textiles. Looms can range from very small hand-held frames, to large free-standing hand looms, to huge automatic mechanical devices....
, invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard
Joseph Marie Jacquard

Joseph Marie Charles nicknamed Jacquard was a straw hat maker before becoming a French silk weaver and inventor. He improved on the original punched card design of Jacques de Vaucanson's loom of 1745, to invent the Jacquard loom mechanism in 1804-1805....
 in 1801, that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with complex patterns such as brocade
Brocade

File:Russian brocade.jpgBrocade is a class of richly decorative shuttle fabrics, often made in colored silks and with or without gold and silver threads....
, damask
Damask

Damask is a figured cloth of silk, wool, linen, cotton, or synthetic fibers, with a pattern formed by weaving. Made with one warp and one weft in which, generally, warp-satin and weft sateen weaves interchange....
, and matelasse. The loom is controlled by pasteboard cards with punched holes, each row of which corresponds to one row of the design. Multiple rows of holes are punched on each card and the many cards that compose the design of the textile are strung together in order. It is based on earlier inventions by the Frenchmen Basile Bouchon
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 which an operator lifted the warp threads using cords....
 (1725), Jean Falcon (1728) and Jacques Vaucanson (1740) .

Principles of Operation

Each hole in the card corresponds to a "Bolus" hook, which can either be up or down. The hook raises or lowers the harness, which carries and guides the warp
Warp (weaving)

In weaving, the warp is the set of lengthwise yarns through which the weft is woven. Each individual warp thread in a fabric is called a warp end....
 thread so that the weft
Weft

In weaving, weft or woof is the yarn which is drawn under and over parallel Warp yarns to create a textile. In North America, it is sometimes referred to as the "fill" or the "filling yarn", and in India, it is referred to as "baana"....
 will either lie above or below it. The sequence of raised and lowered threads is what creates the pattern. Each hook can be connected via the harness to a number of threads, allowing more than one repeat of a pattern. A loom with a 400 hook head might have four threads connected to each hook, resulting in a fabric that is 1600 warp ends
Warp (weaving)

In weaving, the warp is the set of lengthwise yarns through which the weft is woven. Each individual warp thread in a fabric is called a warp end....
 wide with four repeats of the weave going across.

Jacquard
Jacquard
The term "Jacquard loom" is a misnomer. It is the "Jacquard head" that adapts to a great many dobby loom
Dobby loom

A Dobby Loom is a type of floor loom that controls the warp yarn using a device called a dobby. Dobby is short for "draw boy" which refers to the weaver's helpers who used to control the warp thread by pulling on draw threads....
s such as the "Dornier" brand that allow the weaving machine to then create the intricate patterns often seen in Jacquard weaving
Jacquard weaving

Jacquard weaving makes possible in almost any loom the programmed raising of each warp thread independently of the others. This brings much greater versatility to the weaving process, and offers the highest level of warp yarn control....
.

Jacquard looms, whilst relatively common in the textile industry, are not as ubiquitous as dobby looms which are usually faster and much cheaper to operate. However unlike jacquard looms they are not capable of producing so many different weaves from one warp
Warp (weaving)

In weaving, the warp is the set of lengthwise yarns through which the weft is woven. Each individual warp thread in a fabric is called a warp end....
. Modern jacquard looms are controlled by computers in place of the original punched cards, and can have thousands of hooks.

The threading of a Jacquard loom is so labor intensive that many looms are threaded only once. Subsequent warp
Warp (weaving)

In weaving, the warp is the set of lengthwise yarns through which the weft is woven. Each individual warp thread in a fabric is called a warp end....
s are then tied in to 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
Warp (weaving)

In weaving, the warp is the set of lengthwise yarns through which the weft is woven. Each individual warp thread in a fabric is called a warp end....
 the process of re-threading can take days.

Importance to Computing

The Jacquard loom was the first machine to use punch cards to control a sequence of operations. Although it did no computation based on them, it is considered an important step in the history of computing hardware
History of computing hardware

The history of computing hardware encompasses computer hardware, its Computer architecture, and its impact on Computer software.The elements of computing hardware have undergone significant improvement over their history....
. 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

Computer programming is the process of writing, testing, debugging/troubleshooting, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in a programming language....
. Specifically, Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage

Charles Babbage, Royal Society was an England mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer....
 planned to use cards to store programs in his Analytical engine
Analytical engine

The analytical engine, an important step in the history of computers, was the design of a mechanical general-purpose computer by the British mathematician Charles Babbage....
.

See also

  • Timeline of clothing and textiles technology
    Timeline of clothing and textiles technology

    Timeline of clothing and textiles technology.*pre-history - spindle used to create yarn from fibers.* - loom.*c. Upper Paleolithic - Impressions of textiles and basketry and nets left on little pieces of hard clay....
  • Luddite
    Luddite

    The Luddites were a social movement of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland textile artisans in the early nineteenth century who protested—often by destroying mechanized looms—against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work....
  • Jacquard weaving
    Jacquard weaving

    Jacquard weaving makes possible in almost any loom the programmed raising of each warp thread independently of the others. This brings much greater versatility to the weaving process, and offers the highest level of warp yarn control....