January 02, 2018 Tuesday
Bedtime Story
Napoleon Had a Tough Task
In 1798 France had it troops battling in at
least far away 6 countries including Egypt, Switzerland, Rome, Ireland, Belgium
and the newly formed United States of America.
Napoleon Bonaparte now in reign new that he
needed to do something to revive the French economy and one of the things that
he did was to place large orders of Lyon’s silk starting in 1802.
It is a well known strategy of direct
government intervention in the free market to create a demand whose trickledown
effect would eventually be job creation which was essential to quieten the
unrest that was widespread among the masses.
A silk merchant by the name of Gabriel
Detilleu who was aware of Joseph Jacquard and his love for inventions asked him
to have a look at the Vaucanson loom that was lying idle at the National
Conservatory of Arts and Crafts in Paris.
Jacquard went to the National conservatory
and had a long and hard look at not only this variation of the loom but also
those of its predecessors.
He was sure he could fix it up and this
time make it commercially successful; the fact that they all worked was never
in doubt.
Till this day it is not sure what part of
the so called “Jacquard Loom” was built by Jacquard himself since from what we
now know he seems to have combined the best mechanical elements of his
predecessors and managed to get all the glory for him.
Ask any computer science student, and they
are bound to have heard of Jacquard Loom in spite of being completely ignorant
what exactly the loom did or how it came about.
I would bet my entire investment in crypto
currency (which is substantial) that most, or rather nearly all of them would
never have heard of either Basile Bouchon, Jean Falcon or even the great
inventor Jacques de Vaucanson.
Vaucanson was by far a much superior
mechanical engineer and inventor than Jacquard who was essentially a weaver and
merchant with a flair for gizmos and contrivance.
Jacquard loom was in principle the same as
that of Vaucanson except that he used Falcon’s individual paste board cards.
Moreover, he got rid of Vaucanson’s
perforated barrel and replaced it with square prism which was fully perforated
in all of its four sides.
The other modification was that his loom
had eight rows of needles in contrast to Vaucanson’s two that enhanced the
figuring capacity of the machine.
So it was only in 1805 that the power and
potential of automation of weaving looms finally came to be recognized.
That year Emperor Napoleon and Empress
Josephine visited the city of Lyon and had a demo of this new loom.
This is what they saw of the working of
Jacquard loom.
First the fabric design was copied onto a squared
paper.
Then a skilled worker translated the design
into punched cards.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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