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What I remember from school (late 90s) is that Babbage was inspired by Jacquard’s punched cards to use then in his Engine, and either this, or Jacquard directly
by fipar 1y ago
What I remember from school (late 90s) is that Babbage was inspired by Jacquard’s punched cards to use then in his Engine, and either this, or Jacquard directly, inspired the same in Hollerith. I don’t recall it as there being a direct line in terms of “modified loom is general purpose computer) but it was certainly an important influence.
In hindsight it seems easy for some of us to make the connection, but, at the time, it must have been quite the breakthrough.
- zokier 1y agoI'm not disputing the influence of jacquard machines in general, but there is big difference between "having influence on computing" and "is a computer".
- dleeftink 1y agoIt's an interesting question, where the boundaries of an innovation lie. If we take Jacquard's loom as an 'ordinateur' or information ordering machine, its 'computing' properties become more recognisable -- composite outputs and patterns derived from stringing together smaller bits (and strings) of information.
- bregma 1y agoIt's not just a computer, it's a stored program computer. What it's not is a general purpose computer.