Jacquard loom

In 1804 Joseph Marie Jacquard of Lyon combined earlier attempts by Bouchon, Falcon and Vaucanson into a mechanism that actually held up in production. Cards of stiff paper are laced into an endless chain; for each pass of the weft, the holes decide which warp threads are lifted. A pattern that previously required an assistant pulling cords became a stack of cards, and a new stack gave new cloth without rebuilding the loom.

That is where the line to computing runs. The program lives outside the machine and can be swapped — the idea Babbage took wholesale for the Analytical Engine and Hollerith carried into the census. A portrait of Jacquard, woven in silk from 24,000 cards, hung in Babbage's drawing room. The weavers of Lyon, watching their trade get rationalised, were less impressed and burned some of the early looms.