After all my enthusiasm for the book, Jacquard’s Web was ultimately a disappointment. 

Though the truth that modern computers (unlike their human ancestors) descended from textile technology is fascinating, the narrative  in this book is sophomoric and unengaging.  I would much rather read a dry and boring, yet accurate and unembellished textbook than to suffer the attempts of an author who, firstly, fails to write in an engaging literary fashion; secondly, is obviously unable to comprehend the subject about which he writes and thirdly, shows an appalling lack of knowledge regarding the history of the age in which his story is set.  To illustrate the last point, he tells us of how Spitalfields in London became a center for English silk weavers just like its French counterpart in Lyon.  What he doesn’t understand, or at least failed to acknowledge, is that these silk weavers were actually French refugees.  They were Huguenots who settled near London after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had previously granted them the right to worship as Protestants without fear of persecution.

After giving up on the book, I consulted other sources with regard to Charles Babbage (he who used Jacquard’s idea of punch cards to evolve his own idea of an analytical engine, one of which was never built in his own lifetime).  Babbage seems to have been the first stereotype of a computer nerd, with no apparent gift of personality but with infinite obsessive qualities which caused him to, among other things, complain incessantly about organ grinder music in the streets.  This led the London Times to write in his obituary:

“He died at his residence in Dorset-street, Marylebone, at the close of last week, at an age, [in] spite of organ-grinding persecutors, little short of 80 years.” 

The obituary goes on with dripping sarcasm and ill-hidden innuendo, to describe the man’s long life and near-achievements.

Many of my technical colleagues have expressed their belief that the programming language Ada was somehow connected with Babbage, but few have realized that Ada Lovelace, though indeed a friend of Babbage,  was in fact the daughter of Lord Byron, that poet of  tragic young death and, incidentally, perpetrator of an incestual relationship with his younger half-sister, for whom Ada was named.  Scandalous!

But I digress.  In France, Jacquard was compelled by his own poverty to create a way for a handloom to produce more than an inch of intricate silk brocade per day.  Silk brocade was coveted and paid for by royalty, and Jacquard, as a supporter of the elite,  was on the wrong side of the revolution. When he realized which side was winning he conveniently changed his allegiance.  Luckily, this little fact was not discovered and later, when the famous loom had been invented,  Napoleon (a lover of fine rich silken clothing) paraded him about as a model citizen.  My cynical self wonders if Jacquard would have been as happy about “donating” his invention to France if he had not been somewhat fearful about being found to have fought on the “wrong” side earlier.

Babbage, by contrast, was born with the proverbial silver spoon lodged firmly between his gums; his motivation for producing his steam-powered cogwheel-laden “Difference Engine” and later the “Analytical Engine” was sheerly for fun, entertainment, egotism and perhaps the possibility of future fame.  Of the two, I vastly prefer Jacquard.

Meanwhile, back in the present, I am knitting away on the Curve of Pursuit. In this, the good honest Irish yarn from  Blackwater Abbey  in colors “navy” and “haw” seem to follow each other around a descending spiral, an effect achieved by short rows in miles and miles of garter stitch.  Luckily there is a new book in the background, The Voyage of A Summer Sun.  And it is good.