Jacquard's Web: How a Hand-Loom Led to the Birth of the Information Age
Doron Swade'sDifference Engine(2001) recounted the computer's conceptual origin with Charles Babbage, who, as readers discover from Essinger, borrowed from the technology of silk weaving a means of programming his calculating machine. It was the punched card, familiar in computer rooms until the 1960s and which continues a vestigial existence in the punch-card ballot. Its inventor in 1804? Joseph-Marie Jacquard of Lyons, France. Essinger bolsters Jacquard's thin but eventful biography by outlining the subsequent applications of his idea. In addition to clarifying the technical significance of the punched card, Essinger engagingly introduces the personalities-- Babbage, of course, but Lord Byron's daughter, Ada, and IBM chief Thomas Watson, too--whose lives crossed with Jacquard's punched card. Following Babbage's failure, Essinger relates, the punched card was improved on by Herman Hollerith, inventor of automatic tabulating machines, and by Howard Aiken, developer of arguably the first general-purpose computer, the Harvard Mark I in 1944. Essinger's perceptive commentary makes for interesting reading, and his work is a fluid contribution to the history of the computer.Gilbert TaylorCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.