If you mention punch cards to most people, they’ll think of voting. If you mention it to most older computer people, they’ll think of punching programs for big computers on cards. But punched cards ...

An automated loom that transformed the 19th century textile industry and became the inspiration for future data processing machines. Developed by the French silk-weaver, Joseph-Marie Jacquard ...

The world’s leading expert on mechanical computers wasn’t [Charles Babbage]; sure, he could design stuff, but eventually you need to actually build something. We are now graced with the expertise of ...

Punch cards have been used to control the operation of machinery from the early nineteenth century, when the Frenchman Joseph Marie Jacquard patented an attachment to a loom in which a series of ...

WHO invented computer memory? Received wisdom has it that it was Joseph-Marie Jacquard, the Frenchman whose system of punched cards automated silk-weaving looms in the early 19th century. Not so, says ...