Punch cards have been used to control the operation of machinery from the early nineteenth century, when the Frenchman Joseph Marie Jacquard patented an attachment to a loom in which a series of ...

Punch cards have been used to control the operation of machinery from the early nineteenth century, when the Frenchman Joseph Marie Jacquard patented an attachment to a loom in which a series of ...

Developed by the French silk-weaver, Joseph-Marie Jacquard (1752-1834), to control its operation, the loom used a chain of cards punched with holes in a continuous loop. Although punch cards were ...