FASHION:THE MOTHER OF COMPUTING

Fashion and the dawn of the Information Age are directly connected.

The introduction of silk production and weaving into France was initiated by Louis XI 1461 to 1483. In his book, Jacquard's Web, James Essinger spins for us the story of how Joseph-Marie Jacquard, master silk weaver in Napoleonic France, designed a loom which was the world's first automatic machine for weaving elaborate images onto silk. Charles Babbage then developed the automatic punched-card loom which was patented in 1804. He was honoured by Emperor Napoleon.

Along came Ada Lovelace, daughter of famed poet Lord Byron, who met Babbage in 1833. Ada had a passion for technology. She is credited with writing the world's first computer program when she came up with a way of using Babbage's machine to calculate a mathematical sequence known as Bernoulli numbers. We would call that kind of thinking "software development"! Great inspiration for Braveheart women!

The work of these people, driven by the fashion and fabric industry, led to the ancestor of the computer. The Jacquard loom is still alive to this day and producing contemporary fabrics such as synthetic valves for heart bypass patients and airbags for cars. All this woven on today's Jacquard loom.

I include here a picture of Ada Lovelace since she is a major heroine of technology in her own right, and a pretty link betweens fashions past and present in the fields of science and technology.

Fiona/Vancouver Shopping By Appointment
www.vancouvershoppingbyappointment.blog spot.com