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Joseph Marie Jacquard Facts & Worksheets

Joseph Marie Jacquard was the French weaver and inventor who invented a new technology for the industrial application of patterns on fabrics.

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At the beginning of the 19th century, the French weaver and inventor Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented a new technology for the industrial application of patterns on fabrics. Now these fabrics are called Jacquard, and his machine is called a Jacquard machine. He was not the inventor of the programmable loom, but he created an attachment to the loom, which played a very important role not only in the textile industry, but also in development of other programmable machines, such as computers.

See the fact file below for more information on the Joseph Marie Jacquard or alternatively, you can download our 24-page Joseph Marie Jacquard worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

EARLY LIFE

  • Joseph Jacquard was born on July 7, 1752 in Lyon.
  • His father owned a small family weaving industry (two looms), and Joseph began his work activity as a child in one of the many weaving industries in Lyon.
  • He was the fifth of nine children.
  • This hard and unsafe work did not attract him and the future inventor went to study and work in a bookbinding workshop.
  • But to become an outstanding inventor in bookbinding or typography was not Joseph’s destiny. Soon his parents died, and he inherited the weaving looms and a small piece of land.
  • As a result of several unsuccessful business projects, Joseph lost most of his father’s inheritance. At the same time he was fascinated by the engineering problem of improving the loom.
  • Despite the fact that the looms of themselves were severely limited, monochrome fabrics or colored stripes were mass produced.
  • Fabrics with embroidered patterns were still made by hand. Jacquard wanted to improve the fabric so that it was possible to manufacture diaper fabrics in an industrial way.

DISCOVERIES AND INVENTIONS

  • By 1790, Jacquard created a prototype of the machine, but active participation in the revolutionary events in France did not allow him to continue work on the improvement of his invention.
  • After the revolution, Jacquard continued his design search in a different direction.
  • He invented the machine for weaving networks and in 1801, he took it to an exhibition in Paris.
  • There he saw Jacques de Vaucanson’s loom which, in 1745, used a perforated roll of paper to control the interlacing of threads.
  • What he saw pushed Jacquard to a brilliant idea, which he successfully used in his loom.
  • To manage each thread separately, Jacquard invented a punch card and an ingenious mechanism for reading information from it.
  • This allowed him to weave fabrics with patterns set in advance on the punch card.
  • Subsequently, punch cards were also used in analytical machines and other mechanical inventions.
  • In 1804, Jacquard’s invention received a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition, and he was granted a patent.
  • Finally, the industrial version of the Jacquard machine was ready in 1807.
  • To obtain a patterned fabric, the apparatus was fitted to the loom to facilitate the weaving of figured and brocaded fabrics.
  • At first, Jacquard’s looms were destroyed by weavers who feared unemployment.
  • Jacquard machines are used for sewing dresses, outerwear, furniture fabrics, curtains, as well as for the manufacture of lanyards, ribbons for badges, and other promotional materials (stripes, chevrons, labels,etc).
  • Each thread of the warp in the weaving mill passes through a special ring-thread, connected with a special vertical rod.
  • All of them are arranged rather closely, in rows, and at their upper ends, a piece of cardboard with holes is pressed, which corresponds to the rods, which should remain at rest.
  • The number of such cardboards required for the pattern is connected in a continuous chain, and a simple mechanism automatically shifts them after each shuttle pass.
  • The principle of the Jacquard machine is applied in many apparatuses, for example, in the aristophone, the mechanical taper, and one of the Wynston telegraphs.

DEATH AND LEGACY

  • In 1808, Napoleon I awarded Jacquard a prize of 3,000 francs and the right to a prize of 50 francs from each machine tool in force in France.
  • By 1812, more than ten thousand Jacquard looms operated in France.
  • In 1819, Jacquard received the Cross of the Legion of Honor.
  • Joseph Marie Jacquard died in 1834 at the age of 82 years old.
  • In Lyon in 1840, a monument was erected in his honor.
  • The Jacquard loom allowed people to not only weave industrial fabrics with complex patterns (Jacquard), but also became the prototype of modern automatic looms.
  • The Jacquard machine is the first machine to use a punch card in its work.
  • Already in 1823, English scientist Charles Babbage tried to build a computer using punched cards.
  • At the end of the 19th century, an American scientist built a computer and processed the results of the census of the population of 1890 on it.
  • Punch cards in computing were used until the mid-twentieth century.

Joseph Marie Jacquard Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about Joseph Marie Jacquard across 24 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use Joseph Marie Jacquard worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about Joseph-Marie Jacquard who invented a new technology for the industrial application of patterns on fabrics. Now these fabrics are called Jacquard, and his machine is called a Jacquard machine. He was not the inventor of the programmable loom, but he created an attachment to the loom, which played a very important role not only in the textile industry, but also in development of other programmable machines, such as computers.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

  • Joseph Marie Jacquard Facts
  • French Inventor
  • Jacquard Fabric
  • Pattern Names
  • Hidden words
  • Inherited business
  • Design your Clothes
  • The Punch Cards
  • Truth about Jacquard
  • Innovator of the Loom
  • Important dates

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Link will appear as Joseph Marie Jacquard Facts & Worksheets: https://kidskonnect.com - KidsKonnect, April 7, 2019

Use With Any Curriculum

These worksheets have been specifically designed for use with any international curriculum. You can use these worksheets as-is, or edit them using Google Slides to make them more specific to your own student ability levels and curriculum standards.

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