The Reader, created by art collective MidConversation, uses silk squares to "echo" the movement of Jacquard looms and chimes to represent binary code. The looms were controlled by binary punch cards ...

Before IBM, before punch-card computers, before Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, one of the very first machines that could run something like what we now call a "program" was used to make fabric.

If you mention punch cards to most people, they’ll think of voting. If you mention it to most older computer people, they’ll think of punching programs for big computers on cards. But punched cards ...

The world’s leading expert on mechanical computers wasn’t [Charles Babbage]; sure, he could design stuff, but eventually you need to actually build something. We are now graced with the expertise of ...

Computers are alchemical in the way that they use tiny assemblages of conductive squiggles and crystal wafers to generate images, solve complex mathematical problems, and connect people miles apart in ...

1752: Joseph Marie Jacquard is born in Lyon, France. The weaver and inventor would create the first programmable power loom, revolutionize the weaving industry and lay the foundation for modern data ...

Charles Babbage is widely recognized as a pioneer of the programable computer due to his ingenious designs for steam-driven calculating machines in the 19th century. But Babbage drew inspiration from ...

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