Fundamental DL concepts

In 1801, Joseph Marie Charles invented the Jacquard loom. Charles was not a scientist, but simply a merchant. The Jacquard loom used a set of punched cards, where each card represented a pattern to be reproduced on the loom. At the same time, each card was an abstract representation of that pattern. Punched cards have been used, for example, in the tabulating machine invented by Herman Hollerith in 1890, or in the first computers as a means to input code. In the tabulating machine, the cards were simply abstractions of samples to be fed into the machine to calculate statistics on a population. But in the Jacquard loom, their use was subtler, and each card represented the abstraction of a pattern that could be combined with others to create more complex patterns. The punched card is an abstract representation of a feature of reality, the final weaved design.

In a way, the Jacquard loom sowed the seeds of what DL is today, the definition of reality through...