Joseph Marie Jacquard
Invented the Jacquard loom, which used punched cards to automate weaving patterns.
Most quoted
"They say necessity is the mother of invention. In my case, it was the sheer frustration of tangled threads and human error."
— from Apocryphal
"The Luddites fear my machine will take their jobs. I fear they'll never appreciate a perfectly symmetrical floral design."
— from Apocryphal
"Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Give a man a Jacquard loom, and he can weave fish patterns for a lifetime."
— from Apocryphal
All quotes by Joseph Marie Jacquard (315)
The first machine that could read instructions was a loom.
My struggle was not against nature, but against the limits of human attention.
A tapestry is a stored program, made visible.
I was born amongst threads; I shall die leaving behind a new thread of thought.
The loom's click is the sound of an idea being executed.
Even the most complex portrait can be reduced to a series of yes or no commands.
The value of an idea lies in its application.
They called my loom revolutionary; I called it inevitable.
I did not seek to make weavers obsolete, but to make them artists.
The punch card is the first true memory of iron and wood.
My invention is a bridge between the artisan and the age of machines.
The pattern is in the cards, but the soul is in the weaver's intent.
A machine that cannot err is a machine that cannot learn.
I have given industry a nervous system.
Weave not just cloth, but progress.
Contemporaries of Joseph Marie Jacquard
Other Inventions born within 50 years of Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752–1834).