Stone to Silicon

Computing · 1725

Bouchon's punched paper loom

A loom controlled by holes punched in a paper roll.

Basile Bouchon, son of a Lyon organ maker, used perforated paper to select which warp threads a loom raised. It was the first industrial use of a punched medium to store instructions, refined by Falcon and later Jacquard.

See it in the living treeWikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

What it led to 1