The punched card as a separate row of the design, laced into an endless chain

1728 Knowledge infrastructure instrument

An improvement to the figured loom in which Bouchon's continuous roll was replaced by a separate rectangular card: one card for one shed, that is for one row of the design, the cards laced into an endless chain.

The device was built about 1728 by the Lyonnais Jean Falcon, an apprentice of Bouchon. The number of needles grew, and with it the width of the pattern.

The main thing, though, is that the record became divisible: a card can be taken out, corrected, replaced, reordered, copied from a model and stored apart from the loom. It is this form of the record, and not the roll, that reached the Jacquard machine by way of Vaucanson's loom, and from there passed into calculating machines.

Why this date

The year 1728 follows Britannica, which dates the improvement but gives no name. The name Jean-Baptiste Falcon comes from the catalogue entry of the Musée des Arts et Métiers, which speaks plainly of the punched card looms of Basile Bouchon and Jean-Baptiste Falcon, and from Norman's reference work, which gives both name and year. Date and attribution are assembled from two independent sources; no primary document could be checked.

What it grew from

What grew out of it

Node sources

"Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.

Open this node on the map