Computers, cards and tapestries

Been reading the excellent Walter Isaacson’s latest tome The Innovators which fills in many gaps in my knowledge about the history of computing and the many, many hands involved in it (he’s particularly harsh on the Big Man theory of history, which is good from the man who wrote a Steve Jobs biog!).

But one great factoid I picked up from the introduction is worth sharing here: in Charles Babbage’s early thinking on what would come after his Difference Engine, the idea of a programmable machine emerges.

And the technology to do so was copied from a very distant world – from Jacquard’s card-instructed looms in Paris.

When I – as a lad – first came across computing, this is how it was done: using punch cards. I didn’t know why or appreciate its roots.

Copy from afar, indeed