Invention's history and modern impactfrom @frontoffice.co

Transcript

Alright. I'll tell you a story. So it's 1,800, and you're a young worse. And you wanna buy a suit, a dress made out of this type of fabric. Woven silk with an intricate pattern in it. Here's the problem. You can't. It is way too expensive. Each piece takes two people. A skilled weaver and his assistant called a drawboy. And they work together on a loom to manage the warp and the weft. Tier have to mechanically lift the thread to go up and down to create a better. And it's slow, meticulous work. It is very difficult to replicate exactly. But then in eighteen no four something new is invented. So it doesn't just improve on this process, it transforms it entirely. Joseph Marie Jacquard invents a Jacquard loom. So if we were to imagine the design as rows of threads that's replaced by cardboard punch tier, Each particular punch card tells the machine to pull up the warp or knot. Binary. Yes or no. And if you chain the punch cards better, you have the instructions to weave a very complicated pattern. It allows one worse, unaided, to produce fabrics that have unlimited complexity, unlimited length. And if you still have the series of punch cards, you can redo it as often as you like. Better that's really small picture stuff making fabric easier to do. There is like a bigger picture behind this. The rows of punch cards becomes a programming language that enables you to talk to a mechanical machine. Jacquard's machine is hugely influential on Charles Babbage. Charles Babbage originates the concept of a digital programmable computer. Able to incorporate that as part of your design vocabulary can be really useful. Like, that's why you see so many fashion houses where their logos are repeats in a jacquard, not a print. Because they're trying to tell you about identity, heritage, longevity. That's why you see so many football kits with the club logos being woven into the fabric of the jersey. Because it tells people that this is literally the fabric of our club. Subconsciously, they're trying to express heritage authenticity. If you know what to look for, you can see it everywhere. Where the pattern isn't done to a fabric, but the pattern is the fabric, there's a good chance that that is a jacquard effect. That was made on our jacquard loom.