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Jacquard's monument
in Calais.
This statue is outside the Theatre in Place Albert, on the corner of Boulevard Jacquard,
Calais. The Cafe Jacquard, over the road, provides
a great expresso and simple meals.
Rear of statue showing Jacquard's punch card system.
Calais owes much of its world wide renown in the lace industry to Joseph Jacquard(1752-1834), inventor of
a mechanism consisting of a programmed reproduction of a perforated card which could transfer complicated designs to lace.
A statue in the memory of him by the sculptor Marius Roussel, was erected in 1910.
Joseph Marie Jacquard was born at Lyon in France. At the age of 10, he became a draw boy, working
on the loom for master weavers. It was a miserable and tiresome job. On the death of his father, who was a working weaver,
Jacquard inherited two looms, with which he started business on his own account. He did not prosper though, and was at last
forced to become a limeburner at Bresse, while his wife supported herself at Lyons by plaiting straw. In 1794 he took part
in the unsuccessful defense of Lyons against the troops of the Convention; but afterwards served in their ranks on the Rhone
and Loire. After seeing some active service, in which his young son was shot down at his side, he again returned to Lyons.
There he obtained a situation in a factory, and employed his spare time in constructing his improved loom, of which he had
conceived the idea several years previously.
In 1801 Jacquard exhibited his invention at the industrial exhibition at Paris; and in 1803 he was summoned
to Paris and attached to the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. A loom by Jacques de Vaucanson on display there suggested
various improvements in his own, which he gradually perfected to its final state. Although his invention was fiercely opposed
by the silk-weavers, who feared that its introduction, owing to the saving of labour, would deprive them of their livelihood,
its advantages secured its general adoption, and by 1812 there were 11,000 Jacquard looms in use in France. The loom was declared
public property in 1806, and Jacquard was rewarded with a pension and a royalty on each machine.
Jacquard died at Oullins (Rhône), 7 August 1834. Six years later a statue was erected to him in Lyon, on the
site where his 1801 exhibit loom was destroyed.
The Jacquard Loom is a mechanical loom, that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with
complex patterns such as brocade, damask and matelasse. The loom is controlled by punchcards with punched holes, each row
of which corresponds to one row of the design. Multiple rows of holes are punched on each card and the many cards that compose
the design of the textile are strung together in order.
Each hole in the card corresponds to a "Bolus" hook, which can either be up or down. The hook raises or lowers
the harness, which carries and guides the warp thread so that the weft will either lie above or below it. The sequence of
raised and lowered threads is what creates the pattern. Each hook can be connected via the harness to a number of threads,
allowing more than one repeat of a pattern. A loom with a 400 hook head might have four threads connected to each hook, resulting
in a fabric that is 1600 warp ends wide with four repeats of the weave going across.
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