Today jacquard weaves are achieved not with a Jacquard loom, but rather a Jacquard head which is fitted on to a dobby loom.Īlmost all modern brocades are woven with a jacquard device, so one could say that all modern brocades are jacquards, but not all jacquards are brocades, because jacquard looms are used to create other weaves, such as brocatelle, damask and tapestry. Dobby loom patterns, however, are limited to designs that stretch over 40 threads, whereas designs made on a Jacquard loom are virtually limitless. The dobby loom was even cheaper to run than the Jacquard, and supplanted it for all simpler patterned weaves. The jacquard loom was further revolutionised in 1843, with the invention of the dobby loom, which makes simpler patterned fabrics by a method of up to 40 frames which lift according to a programme. Punch cards in use on a Jacquard loom at the Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester, England Babbage and Lovelace (the ‘Father of the Computer’ and world’s first computer programmer and first person to envision a computer that did much more than mathematical calculations (also Byron’s daughter), respectively) were familiar with Jacquards loom, and Babbage intended to use punch cards based on the loom punch cards in his Analytical Engine. The Jacquard loom and its punch card pattern system is considered an important point in the history of the computer. If the punch cards with holes which create a pattern sounds a little like an early computer – it is.
Jacquard looms were so much easier and cheaper to operate that the old style of looms quickly became obsolete, and within a few decades of Jacquard’s invention almost all elaborate fabrics woven in the West, including brocades, damasks, and richly patterned faux-Kashmiri or ‘Paisley’ shawls, were woven on Jacquard looms. The new looms could be operated by an unskilled labourer, making richly patterned fabrics faster and cheaper to produce. Skilled craftsmen who could read pattern diagrams and manipulate the pattern as it was being woven were no longer needed to weave brocades and other designs, and the Jacquard loom did not require the assistance of an additional drawboy. The Jacquard loom revolutionised the production of elaborately patterned fabrics. Jacquard loom at the Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester, England
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