I’ve always wondered why the popular narrative for the origin of compute references Babbage and not the Jacquard Machine. When you google the history of compute, or hear talks across the venture backed field of technology, Babbage’s calculating machine dominates the narrative. I was captivated by this narrative for many years, but then I began reading more about Jacquard’s loom, punchcards, and Luddism, and you begin to realize that we see history based upon where want things to go, and Babbage represents a very managerial view of things, and not of the workers.
Babbage was not interested in a calculation engine because he wanted to make something, he envisioned being able to better manage workers. Babbage’s work came 30 years after the automated loom, and was influenced by the loom. Another thing that I find fascinating is that his calculation engine did not work, and the loom did. The popular narrative tends to go that Babbage created a calculation engine (that did not work), then roughly a hundred years later we developed computers. Babbage’s story resonates as part of the popular narrative because 1) It is seen as math, which makes it purer, and 2) it is about managing labor, and not producing anything.
Jacuard’s loom worked, and even though he is not the origin of the idea, it actually programmatically using punchcards produced something that was useful. The problem is that the story of the loom is much more problematic and shined a light on the problematic plight of the worker which we were being abstracted away. We had a neat little story to for this period—-luddites were anti-technology, end of story. We didn’t want anyone scratching at this one anymore, so it can’t become our origin story-—we need something that reflects the future capitalists envision, not the problematic past.
The story of a programmatic loom is a messy one, from labor to the origin of the idea, but it provides a much compelling and functional origin story for compute. The loom speaks to the future of what I want to see, and my personal mission as the API Evangelist. This is the origin story and history I want to shine a light on. It is messy, problematic, but also pushes us to discuss actual labor that we can all relate to, and not some abstract managerial concept of just extracting value from labor, and reducing people to calculations and configurations in an algorithm. While I do celebrate Lady Lovelace’s contribution at this stage of compute, I think we should be having more discussion about Babbage, what he borrowed (stole) from the loom, and was what he was looking to abstract away.
