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This programming is sponsored by Lindstrom

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Wealth, a wealth management firm partnering

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with individuals and families dedicated to

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helping them build, preserve and manage

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wealth by creating a customized plan

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to work toward achieving their goals.

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More at lindstromwealth.com. This

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is the Engines of Our Ingenuity,

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made possible by the friends of

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KUHF Houston. Today

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a story about wool weaving and

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computers. The University of Houston's College

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of Engineering presents this series about

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the machines that make our civilization

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run and the people whose ingenuity

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created them. Weaving

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a pattern into cloth is no easy matter. Different

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shuttles carrying the weft strands have to be

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threaded through the warp strands in a precise

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order to give the weave its pattern. In

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1805 a French engineer named Jacquard

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invented means for automating that process.

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He passed a chain of cards with holes punched

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in them in front of a mechanism. The

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mechanism reached through wherever a hole let it

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and picked up a thread. We've

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used the Jacquard loom principle in textile

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mills ever since. Five

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years later in 1810 the young

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Englishman Charles Babbage went to Cambridge to

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study math and mechanics. In

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1816 when he was only 25 he was

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made a fellow of the Royal Society for

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his work on calculating machines and methods. In

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1834 he conceived a

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machine that could be told how

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to carry out a sequence of

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calculations. He conceived of programmable computation.

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He never completed this analytical engine

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as he called it, but he

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set down all the essential principles

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of today's digital computers. Now

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back to Jacquard's loom. The

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key to operating any computer lies

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in transmitting sequences of on-off commands.

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Babbage used Jacquard's style punched cards.

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The presence or absence of a

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hole communicated a simple on-off command

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to the machine. But

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Babbage's idea went fallow for a

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long time. Meanwhile another bright young

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man, Herman Hollerith, joined the

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census office, a world of endless

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copying and tallying. Suppose someone asked,

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What percent of our population is

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Irish immigrants? How do you

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get an answer from millions of data sheets? One

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person had tried making ink marks on

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a continuous paper roll, then Hollerith thought

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of punching holes in the paper like

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a piano-player roll. Holes registered

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each piece of data mechanically, the

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way a player piano sounds notes,

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but that lost the identity of

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individual records and it opened the

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door to nasty errors. One

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day a friend said to Hollerith, There should be

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a way to use separate cards with notched edges

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to keep track of data. Bingo!

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Hollerith saw it. He developed a system

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for punching all the data for each

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person into a single card. If you

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were a citizen and you were literate,

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one hole went in column 7, row

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9. He had a full system working

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in time for the 1890 census. If

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you started using the computer before

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the 1980s, you too worked with

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Hollerith cards. They were the same

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size as an 1890 dollar bill.

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You typed each Fortran command on

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its own card. Hollerith eventually left

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the census office to form his

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own company. He called it International

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Business Machines, or IBM.

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It really is wondrous to see how

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ideas turn and change and flow. Jacquard

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to Babbage to Hollerith and Hollerith's

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company at length building fully evolved

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Babbage engines for us all

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to use. I'm John

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Leinhardt at the University of Houston where

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we're interested in the way

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inventive minds work.

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This programming is sponsored

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by Trinity University, home

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to a community of

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diverse creators, innovators, and

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scholars driven to lead

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with energy and empathy.

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More information at Trinity.edu/values.