created 2024-04-19, & modified, =this.modified
Jacquard’s web - how a hand loom lead to the birth of the information age
We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves. Ada Lovelace
https://www.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/jacquard-loom
the average silkworm cocoon contains a single thread of silk that when fully unwound is often as much as a full kilometer in length.
a loom is designed to hold a set of horizontal threads - known as the warp - so that they do not tangle. The loom must also facilitate the weaving process by allowing the set of vertical threads - the weft - to be interlaced with the warp.
The idea was punch cards - each punched card would be pressed once against the back of an array of small, narrow and circular metal rods. Each individual rod would control the action of one weighted string that would in turn govern one individual warp thread. If the tip of the rod in question encountered solid cardboard when presssed against the card, the rod would not move and the warp thread it controlled would stay where it was. On the other hand if the tip of the rod in question enncountered a hole in the punched card th etip would pass through the hole and the individual warp thread controlled by that particular rod would be raised. Every single row of weaving would have a new punched card to govern it, the sequence of which in the correct order would always produce the same design.
Jacquard made this process automatic, reliable and rapid - a mechanically stunning and commercially viable contraption. The weaver no longer needed an assistant for the manual tasks.
modern jacquard looms weave tubes of synthetic fabric employed in artifical valves implanted in heart bypass patients.
Babbage took Jacquard’s use of punched cards to control the action of small metal rods to be put to use for the general solving of calculations.
When we use a computer we are essentially using a special kind of Jacquard loom built to weave information rather than fabric.
Babbage’s analytical engine had modern computer features such as a memory (he called it the store) and a processor (called ‘the mill’)
babbage was a member of the cambridge ghost club and also the extractor’s club, used to make plans to extract members from a madhouse, should relatives ever manage to send him to one.
compiled mathematical tables of logarithms were used in factual calculation but had errors An undetected error in a logarithmic table is like a sunken rock at sea yet undiscovered, upon which it is impossible to say what wrecks may have taken place
fat grass - low on food chain, energy stores + have an analog computer, a piece of clothing that thinks
analytical engine, size of a small locomotive and 20K cogwheels, a victorian computer made of cogs.
The store and the mill: the terminology was an elegant metaphor from the textile industry, where yarns were brought from the store to the mill where they were woven into fabric, which was then sent back to the store. In the Analytical engine, numbers would be brought to the store from the arithmetic mill for processing, and the results of the computation returned to the store.
a weave of elements of time creates the present, rather than a singular force. Like the existence of the computer, it is a web of developments that results in it. You can read it sequentially but there are pressures that guide. How can I direct the current towards a path?
Hollerith’s tabulation machines - pantograph punch - tabulators, used in the census.
sound of “a roomful of ladies knitting” was early IBM computer. First automatic digital calculating device ever to be successfull constructed. The Harvard Mark I
The advance of technology has allowed us to weave at the speed of light
Mathematics of the Incas - code of the quipu This book is about an artifact that becaem the medium for expression in a major civilization “One of the three brothers had a golden sling, and with it he could throw a stone up to the sky; it would almost touch the clouds” - this is an incan origin story → it is spoken in Quechua, recorded into Spanish and then translated into English
A quipu is a collection of cords with knots tied into them.
In earlier times, when the Inca’s moved in upon an area, a census was taken and the results were put on quipus. The output of gold mines, the composition of work forces, the amount and kinds of tribute, the contents of the storehouses - were all recorded on Quipus (according to Cieza)
Cieza died young, 1554. In a portion of the will devoted to saying masses, he requests hundreds for himself and his family and others. Eight masses should be said for a women called Ana.
quipus have levels. main cord with pendannt chords, which can be looped. subsidiaries can hang off pendants cords can hang on top, a top cord dangling cords can hang off the end, almost like a credits they provide a sequence, a before and after can be applied from their introduction. terms like above and below become applicable.
spaces between cords are also part of the intentional overall construction
color is fundamental to the symbolic system of the quipu. Color coding, that is, using colors to represent something other than themselves is a familiar idea. lobsterman buoys are colored to distingish between the fisherman
the knots are base 10 system and would mark numbers, 1 2 3 = 1 knot space 2 knot space 3 knot space
Native terms - huaca, an object that is sacred ayllu - a fundamental social unit beyond the family. a village might be composed of several ayllu
The quipumaker - compared to sumerian tablets, the writing space is nonlinear. TThe nonlinerarity is a consequence of the soft materials he used. A group of string occupy a space that has no definite orientation; as the quipumaker connected tstrings to each other, the sapec became definied by the points where the strings were attacheed (these did not follow any strict left to right or right to left sequence), especially with the added dimension of color.
we do not know how many quipus still exist below the ground, in graves. No two quipumakers write alike, and also differ in terms of legibility, with no two making knots the same.
pg 77 the signs for full time and half time
it is impossible to say that a certain quipu is a record of a certain census, or a song in praise of the sapa inca