[Medicine Science] Posselt Emanuel Anthony (1858 1921) The

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[Medicine & Science] Posselt, Emanuel Anthony (1858-1921)
The Jacquard Machine Analyzed and Explained: With an Appendix on the Preparation of Jacquard Cards, and Practical Hints to Learners of Jacquard Designing.

Philadelphia: Under the Auspices of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, 1888.

First edition, small folio, illustrated throughout with text diagrams and two folding plates, bound in publisher's dark brown cloth, titled in gilt on front cover and spine, some dents to front board, generally good, shadows of the turn-ins from a former hand sewn jacket of striped fabric burned onto endleaves and pastedowns; with a long strip of graph paper inscribed by hand in ink and pencil with working instructions for dressing a loom for a woven fabric pattern loosely inserted, 10 3/4 x 7 1/2 in.

Posselt was a master weaver who emigrated to the United States from the Czech Republic (then Reichenberg, in the Austrian Empire) in the 1870s, after graduating from weaving school. At home, he managed his father's textile mills and toured Europe to learn more about the industry. He embarked upon similar pursuits in this country, eventually settling in Philadelphia at the Pennslyvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, where he served as its first director of the textile division. His broad knowledge of weaving informs this exhaustive and copiously illustrated treatise describing the workings of the Jacquard loom.

In addition to the Jacquard machine's value to the textile industry, its invention also represents an important advancement in the development of mechanical computing. The loom executed a complicated series of binary code operations (which thread was over or under its crossing thread at any given intersection) by way of punch cards. The earliest computers designed by IBM worked by using the same punched card technology pioneered by Jacquard's invention.

Stephen Jay Gould, in his essay, "For Want of a Metaphor," published in the collection, The Flamingo's Smile, argues that the punch card also presented a new way for scientists to imagine how biological processes unfold. He proposes that our understanding of the development of an embryo was hindered before the punch card came along. Once we digested the idea of an object seemingly unrelated in look to the finished product that nonetheless contains the code for executing it, we opened the door to much bigger ideas.

Origins of Cyberspace 355.

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