I worked on an early spreadsheet and word-processing system at Lehman Brothers back in about 1984. The system was called Jacquard.
The investment bankers built comparative financials in this system and printed them out on 14x11 folded paper.
The deal was that you could enter formulas into a bar, with a formula for each column, and drag the bar down to apply the formula to the cells.
I'm baffled by the persistent notion that Jacquard's loom is somehow related to computing. There is no computation. It is not remotely the first punchcard-driven loom. Extremely complex musical and animated automata existed long prior. E.g. the Banu Musa automatic flute player.
The article quotes the reason being "inspired by" that loom. uh...
The core requirement for “programmability” is a machine whose behavior can be changed by altering symbolic instructions without rebuilding the machine.
The Banu Musa automatic flute player doesn’t meet this bar. The flute player was mechanically configured, not symbolically programmed. It had no conditional logic or flow control. No stored symbolic instructions.
To contrast, the Jacquard Loom used an externally stored instructions (punch cards). It allowed arbitrary-length instruction sequences, which is a primitive form of control flow.
Punchcards are also mechanically configured, not symbolically programmed. If you see huge semantical difference between a card with holes and a cylinder with pins or a cam with groves, please explain that difference. Or is the "arbitrary length" the main difference?
I'd imagine something that changes operation based purely on state (position of a dial, presence of a peg in a slot etc) conceptually being "symbolic". Punchcards are not it.
I used to have colleagues who literally learned to program on punched card machines. As in they wrote a program on paper in symbolic assembler, manually converted it to machine code, punched the machine code onto a card,and then carried the cards to the nearby university so that they could run their school homework program.
They would be amused by the idea that this wasn't computing.
The usual argument is that the Jacquard's loom inspired Herman Hollerith’s tabulating machine, used to tally the 1890 census, and became the basis of IBM.
Essentially, the speedups in textiles, inspired a speedup in computing (tabulating initially), which kicked-off the modern information technology industry.
And even if there wasn't any computation, it still is automated data processing (albeit simple).
By chance I was reading about this yesterday, only in the context of unemployment.
In Das Kapital, Section 5: The Strife Between Workman and Machine, Marx talks about how the automatic looms caused some of the very first waves of mass unemployment under nascent capitalism.
He tells how in some German states they banned the use of looms, burned them, some say even drowned or strangled their creators. Both the state and the textile workers did this in order to preserve order.
Later, states allowed them but the textile workers formed sabotage units in order to destroy machines and keep their jobs.
At the end it ends with this: "It took both time and experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production (the machine), but against the mode in which they are used."
Very relevant in the face of progress, especially of AI.
Ps: and a quick reminder that communism is about developing production for human needs not profits. The ills of unemployment would be unnecessary with added efficiency.
I worked on an early spreadsheet and word-processing system at Lehman Brothers back in about 1984. The system was called Jacquard. The investment bankers built comparative financials in this system and printed them out on 14x11 folded paper. The deal was that you could enter formulas into a bar, with a formula for each column, and drag the bar down to apply the formula to the cells.
Sounds a bit like Lotus Improv or the older Javelin --- any articles on it?
The history of how we go from a loom ca. 1725 to 80x25 terminals ca. 2026 is fascinating. It's been written up many times, here's my take:
https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/06/web-of-knowledge/
I'm baffled by the persistent notion that Jacquard's loom is somehow related to computing. There is no computation. It is not remotely the first punchcard-driven loom. Extremely complex musical and animated automata existed long prior. E.g. the Banu Musa automatic flute player.
The article quotes the reason being "inspired by" that loom. uh...
The core requirement for “programmability” is a machine whose behavior can be changed by altering symbolic instructions without rebuilding the machine.
The Banu Musa automatic flute player doesn’t meet this bar. The flute player was mechanically configured, not symbolically programmed. It had no conditional logic or flow control. No stored symbolic instructions.
To contrast, the Jacquard Loom used an externally stored instructions (punch cards). It allowed arbitrary-length instruction sequences, which is a primitive form of control flow.
Punchcards are also mechanically configured, not symbolically programmed. If you see huge semantical difference between a card with holes and a cylinder with pins or a cam with groves, please explain that difference. Or is the "arbitrary length" the main difference?
I'd imagine something that changes operation based purely on state (position of a dial, presence of a peg in a slot etc) conceptually being "symbolic". Punchcards are not it.
I used to have colleagues who literally learned to program on punched card machines. As in they wrote a program on paper in symbolic assembler, manually converted it to machine code, punched the machine code onto a card,and then carried the cards to the nearby university so that they could run their school homework program.
They would be amused by the idea that this wasn't computing.
Punched cards store bits. Bits can store symbols.
> Punchcards are also mechanically configured, not symbolically programmed.
I don’t know that I said the punchcards are programmable.
It is the machine that is programmable via the punchcards.
The usual argument is that the Jacquard's loom inspired Herman Hollerith’s tabulating machine, used to tally the 1890 census, and became the basis of IBM.
Essentially, the speedups in textiles, inspired a speedup in computing (tabulating initially), which kicked-off the modern information technology industry.
And even if there wasn't any computation, it still is automated data processing (albeit simple).
Here is a video that explains better how it works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6NgMNvK52A
This related BBC QI video is quite interesting: Which Software Drove People To Violence?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7r1GnG9cQ8
By chance I was reading about this yesterday, only in the context of unemployment.
In Das Kapital, Section 5: The Strife Between Workman and Machine, Marx talks about how the automatic looms caused some of the very first waves of mass unemployment under nascent capitalism.
He tells how in some German states they banned the use of looms, burned them, some say even drowned or strangled their creators. Both the state and the textile workers did this in order to preserve order.
Later, states allowed them but the textile workers formed sabotage units in order to destroy machines and keep their jobs.
At the end it ends with this: "It took both time and experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production (the machine), but against the mode in which they are used."
Very relevant in the face of progress, especially of AI.
Ps: and a quick reminder that communism is about developing production for human needs not profits. The ills of unemployment would be unnecessary with added efficiency.
Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm...