Lot 67: Joseph-Marie Jacquard (1752-1854) - a fine woven silk La Mémoire portrait Executed in 1839 on the programmable Jacquard loom by Didter Petit et cie, Lyon,

Executed in 1839 on the programmable Jacquard loom by Didter Petit et cie, Lyon,
the known portrait view of Jacquard seated in a workshop interior, model of his loom with loose punch cards, tools and measuring drums arranged on racks behind, view through the musket-ball broken window of a town, wide plain margin, lower right with weaver's name, dated below in Roman numerals, glazed in contempory carved wood gilt frame with gallery and Merchant's Club labels verso - woven image 17 x 13.3/8in (43 x 34cm), the frame 28 x 23in. (71 x 58.5cm)

Reference:
Jacquard's Web - How a Hand Loom Led to the Birth of the Information Age, James Essinger, 2004;
Mechanical Music and Technical Apparatus, Thursday 31 May 2007, christie's, lot 1 (for similar later example)

When examining the birth of the programmable computer, the medal usually gets awarded to Charles Babbage (1791-1871), a man who, against the modest technology of the day, designed on paper the world's first difference engine capable of handling 200dp of information at the same time.

Joseph-Marie Jacquard's close connection to the mill industry may be seen as a distraction for those who are not informed as to the sheer cleverness of his mind. Seeing row upon row of manually operated looms weaving multi-tone sheets and fabrics, he stumbled upon an idea of making a semi-automatic tone-selection device, integrated onto the loom, for quicker and more complex patterns.

Using Jacquard's definition of 40,000 punched-cards for each 'line' per 20-inches of weave, the system worked just as a modern fax machine does today. Each punch in the card directed either a black or a white coloured thread into the headstock of the loom, pin-pointing the desired thread into place. It was also tried in colour-combinations, such as red and yellow, blue and green, although these examples are extremely rare.

In the 1830s, engravings were a popular medium for use in plates in books and when hand-coloured, for framed studies.
When an example of this loom-weaved portrait was shown to scholars at the Royal Academy, it was listed and confirmed as being a print of an engraving. A passage in Essinger's book as referenced above confirms notes this amusing confusion. The detail of the weave is quite outstanding, even by today's standards.

Between 1871-1995, this particular portrait hung in the Merchant's Club - a rather appropriate establishment based in lower Manhattan, made up of members belonging to the textile industry.