January 03, 2018 Wednesday
Bedtime Story
Napoleon is Impressed with "Jacquard Loom"
I am continuing from last night how
Jacquard loom works in actuality and the demo that Napoleon Bonaparte got to
see.
First the fabric design was copied onto a
squared paper.
Then a skilled worker translated the design
into punched cards.
The cards are then stitched together into a
continuous belt and fed into the loom.
Then as we know, holes in the card control
which threads are raised for weaving the pattern.
This automation enabled complex designs
cheaper to be produced and fabrics with very intricate design made available to
more people at lower costs.
Emperor Napoleon was very impressed and
granted Jacquard a lifelong pension of 3000 francs.
Over and above this, Jacquard was to
receive a royalty of 50 francs for each loom that was bought in the next six
years.
You must understand mon ami that Jacquard
had as much to do with computers or calculating devices or even mathematics as
I have to do with religion and reproduction.
Jacquard had no knowledge or any interest
in making a mechanical machine that would be capable of performing mathematical
operations.
Charles Babbage thirty years later had no
interest either in weaving or in looms.
Yet both had shared an interest in
automation though for very different purposes.
Babbage came to know about this automatic
Jacquard looms and the idea struck him that if punched cards could be used as
storage for patterns, then they could also be used as a more general storage
devices.
If you remember, on the night of December
15, 2017 I wrote that one major reason why the analytical engine makes for a
great bedtime storytelling is that it involves multiple personalities, the most
colorful of them obviously being Babbage.
The other characters that are interwoven in
this story are the French weaver and merchant Joseph Marie Jacquard and an
English countess by the name of Ada, Countess of Lovelace.
We also saw that the story of the merchant
and weaver Joseph Marie Jacquard involved many more interesting French
personalities.
Narrating the story of Joseph Marie
Jacquard necessitated me to delve into the story of French weaving industry of
the Eighteenth century.
The French weaving industry in turn is
intricately connected to the French Revolution.
Now let me tell the story of Lady Ada and
how she was connected with Babbage and his analytical engine.
Ada Byron (as she was earlier known) was
born in London of 1815 whose father was Lord Byron who is regarded as one of
the greatest British poets.
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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