WHO invented computer memory? Received wisdom has it that it was Joseph-Marie Jacquard, the Frenchman whose system of punched cards automated silk-weaving looms in the early 19th century.
Not so, says James Essinger. His entertaining tale of Jacquard’s enduring influence on the information age reveals the inventor to be one Monsieur Falcon, whose first name may have been Jean or Louis. In 1723, 78 years before the Jacquard loom was patented, Falcon developed the first unwieldy, punched-card loom, in which the cards representing a silk pattern were pushed by hand into the loom, one at a time.
Jacquard’s genius was…
