Essinger, James. Jacquard's web; how a hand loom led to the birth of the Information Age

Kliatt, Nov, 2007 by Raymond Puffer

ESSINGER, James. Jacquard's web; how a hand loom led to the birth of the Information Age. Oxford University Press. 302p. illus. bibliog, index, c2004. 978-0-19-280578-2. $16.95. A

This piquantly titled book indeed speaks to a great truth unknown to nearly everyone except the super-techies of the computer world: the first concepts and technical innovations that led to our present Information Society had their origins in the esoteric world of the French commercial silk weavers back during the Napoleonic Age. Jean-Marie Jacquard's great contribution to the world was rooted in a longstanding problem in the luxury silk world, in which the raised brocade patterns were the most coveted of all. Well they might be, for instead of steady warp-on-woof weaving, brocades had to be crafted painstakingly thread by thread, each one individually lifted by hand at numerous points along its path. Assistants called draw-boys performed this intricate and arduous labor, which limited an entire day's weaving to just a centimeter or two. Jacquard's contribution was to use an array of cardboard punch cards, fed into the loom automatically to direct an intricate system of weights and pulleys. These would in turn lift each thread at precisely the right point and time to allow a simple floral pattern to be woven at a high rate of speed. His innovation transformed silk weaving from a craft into a modern manufacturing system.

Hard on Jacquard's heels was the polymath Charles Babbage, an engineer, philosopher, artist and salon-master whose nimble mind immediately saw more to the silk weaver's invention than mere textile production. Babbage had devoted years of work to a pair of convoluted mechanical calculating machines, and he saw that the punch card system would be a breakthrough. He was unsuccessful, but his Analytical and his Difference Engines provoked the deep interest of similar minds down through the years, culminating in the earliest contemporary computers that appeared in WW II.

Essinger tells his tale well, taking it far beyond the simple "gee-whiz" story of the unlikely origins of the modern computer. Each step from Jacquard to the present has been a fusion of deep abstract theorizing and the devising of intricate engineering processes. The text does not skimp on the details, and the mature reader who completes the book will have a solid grasp of what is happening today and how it all came about. All of this is described in simple enough fashion, but it will be the YAs with an interest in science, mathematics, and history who will make the most of it. Raymond Puffer, Ph.D., Historian (retired), Edwards AFB, CA

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