Like many an invention, he was standing on the shoulders of others
Basile Bouchon (1725) created one of the earliest automated looms using perforated paper tape to control the weaving pattern.
Jean-Baptiste Falcon (1728) improved on Bouchon's design by using chains of punched cards instead of continuous paper tape, making the system more durable and easier to handle.
Jacques Vaucanson (1745) further refined the concept with his own punch card loom design.
Jacquard's breakthrough came in 1804-1805 when he synthesized and perfected these earlier innovations into what became known as the Jacquard loom. His version was more reliable, easier to operate, and became widely adopted - which is why his name became so strongly associated with the technology.
There are examples of these in the London Science Museum. I strongly recommend a visit - and not just for those: there's also a (working) full-scale replica of Babbage's difference engine; the entire early history of steam engines (the genuine articles); a duplicating lathe, from the early 19th century; models of the entire history of the (British, at least) tractor; an entire analogue telephone exchange; and way, way, way more. It's a geek's delight. One of my favorite museums ever, but be warned: it took me more than a week's worth of visits to feel like I'd seen it thoroughly.
Thanks, I learned something today. If Wikipedia is to be believed:
> He played an important role in the development of the earliest programmable loom (the "Jacquard loom"), which in turn played an important role in the development of other programmable machines, such as an early version of digital compiler used by IBM to develop the modern day computer.
Our modern-day nomenclature owes a lot to the 'arrays' and 'threads' that made up these weaving machines (see Howard Rheinhold's Tools for Thought)[0].
Evidently, the punch cards that stored Jacquard's weaving patterns were a direct inspiration for Babbage's analytical engine.
From a computer-science theoretic view, any any recursively enumerable transform is computing. It's pretty easy to see the translation between a Jaquard loom and an abstract Turing machine. Just because it smells of machine oil and lanolin instead of ozone and magic smoke doesn't mean an automated loom and a modern computer are not essentially the same device, mathematically speaking.
What I remember from school (late 90s) is that Babbage was inspired by Jacquard’s punched cards to use then in his Engine, and either this, or Jacquard directly, inspired the same in Hollerith. I don’t recall it as there being a direct line in terms of “modified loom is general purpose computer) but it was certainly an important influence.
In hindsight it seems easy for some of us to make the connection, but, at the time, it must have been quite the breakthrough.
I'm not disputing the influence of jacquard machines in general, but there is big difference between "having influence on computing" and "is a computer".
It's an interesting question, where the boundaries of an innovation lie. If we take Jacquard's loom as an 'ordinateur' or information ordering machine, its 'computing' properties become more recognisable -- composite outputs and patterns derived from stringing together smaller bits (and strings) of information.
When I was younger I worked with a lot of prototype devices. The lab always had the smell of rosin core and ozone and, from time to time, something worse that resulted in the requirement for a new board. And once, a new desk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine