Synopsis
Jacquard's Web is the fascinating story of how Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented a loom that was to spark the beginning of today s information age. The astonishing new loom, invented in 1804, enabled the master weavers of Lyons to create their beautiful silk fabrics 25 times faster than had ever been possible before. This device used revolutionary punched cards to store instructions for weaving the required pattern or design. The loom proved an outstanding success, and these cards are now rightly viewed as the world s first computer programs. In this previously untold story, James Essinger brings to light a series of historical links that reveal the extraordinary relationship between the nineteenth-century world of weaving and today s computer age. Along the way, he introduces a cast of colourful, passionate and often eccentric characters. These include two of the most intriguing people in the history of science and technology: Charles Babbage, the great Victorian scientist and thinker, and the beautiful and witty Countess of Lovelace, Lord Byron s daughter, who played a crucial role in developing Babbage s work. The book also tells the stories of the other pioneers who helped transform the technology of the punched-card loom into the modern computer. People such as Herman Hollerith, the brilliant German-American inventor; Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM; and Howard Aiken, who built one of the world s very first computers. James 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.
Présentation de l'éditeur
Jacquard's Web is the story of some of the most ingenious inventors the world has ever known, a fascinating account of how a hand-loom invented in Napoleonic France led to the development of the modern information age. James Essinger, a master story-teller, shows through a series of remarkable and meticulously researched historical connections (spanning two centuries and never investigated before) that the Jacquard loom kick-started a process of scientific evolution which would lead directly to the development of the modern computer. The invention of Jacquard's loom in 1804 enabled the master silk-weavers of Lyons to weave fabrics 25 times faster than had previously been possible. The device used punched cards, which stored instructions for weaving whatever pattern or design was required; it proved an outstanding success. These cards can very reasonably be described as the world's first computer programmes. In this engaging and delightful book, James Essinger reveals a plethora of extraordinary links between the nineteenth-century world of weaving and today's computer age: to give just one example, modern computer graphics displays are based on exactly the same principles as those employed in Jacquard's special woven tableaux. Jacquard's Web also introduces some of the most colourful and interesting characters in the history of science and technology: the modest but exceptionally dedicated Jacquard himself, the brilliant but temperamental Victorian polymath Charles Babbage, who dreamt of a cogwheel computer operated using Jacquard cards, and the imaginative and perceptive Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's only legitimate daughter.
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