Atlas Trail
From Punched Cards to Processors: How a Loom Programmed the Computer
A textile machine built to weave patterned silk gave computing its oldest surviving idea: instructions read from a removable medium. This trail follows that idea across a century and a half, from Joseph Marie Jacquard's loom to the single chip that put a whole computer in your pocket.
Stop 1 of 4.
Inventions
The Jacquard Loom: a chain of punched cards controls which warp threads rise for each pass of the shuttle, patented 1804-05, the first working example of a program read from a removable, reusable medium.
Stop 2 of 4.
Inventions
The Analytical Engine: Charles Babbage explicitly modeled his mechanical computer's instruction and data input on Jacquard's punched cards, a design never completed in Babbage's lifetime but recognized as the first general-purpose computer concept.
Stop 3 of 4.
Inventions
The Integrated Circuit: decades later, the logic that once filled a room of relays and vacuum tubes was etched onto a single chip, the miniaturization step that made a complete computer processor on one piece of silicon conceivable.
Stop 4 of 4.
Inventions
The Microprocessor: a complete central processing unit on a single chip, small and cheap enough to embed in an ordinary product, the component that let computing power leave the machine room for good.
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