What Happened on July 7th

Joseph-Marie Jacquard, inventor of the Jacquard loom, was born in France. The Jacquard loom pioneered the use of punched cards to give instructions to a machine, in this case a loom weaving rugs and linens.

Herman Hollerith later latched onto the punch-card technique for his machines that calculated the US census in the early part of the 20th century. The first several decades of computers continued to utilize punch cards for programming.