Basile Bouchon

Basile Bouchon was a textile worker in Lyon who invented a way to control a loom with a perforated paper tape in 1725. The son of an organ maker, Bouchon adapted the concept of music automata controlled by pegged cylinders to the repetitive task of weaving. Further refinements by others eventually lead to the wildly successful Jacquard loom.

References

• Poncelet, Jean-Victor, Travaux de la Commission Francaise. L’Exposition Universelle de 1851, vol. 3, part 1 (Machines et outils appliqués aux arts textiles), section 2, pages 348-349 (1857). [Poncelet’s history of the Jacquard loom is the basis for most subsequent accounts.]

• Usher, Abbot Payson. A History of Mechanical Inventions. Revised edition. (Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, Inc., 1988), pages 289-291. (Originally published in 1929 by Harvard University Press in Cambridge, Mass.)

• Randell, Brian, ed. The Origins of Digital Computers: Selected Papers , 3rd ed. (N.Y., N.Y.: Springer-Verlag, 1982), page 5.

• Eymard, Paul (1863) “Historique du metier Jacquard,” Annales des Sciences physiques et naturelles*, 3rd series, vol. 7, pages 34-56; see especially page 37. (* published in Lyon, France by Barret)

• Ballot, Charles. L’introduction du machinisme dans l’industrie française. (Lille-Paris: F. Rieder, 1923), page 339.

• Ballot, Charles. Revue d'histoire de Lyon: Études, Documents, Bibliographie (Lyon, France: A. Rey et Co., 1913), vol. 2, pages 6-10.

• Barlow, Alfred. The History and Principles of Weaving by Hand and by Power (London, England: Kessinger Publishing, 2007). See Chapter 11. (Originally published 1876 by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington in London.)

External Links

Photograph of replica of Bouchon loom: http://cs-exhibitions.uni-klu.ac.at/index.php?id=315