Did the Jacquard Loom weave plain cloth faster than a standard Power Loom setup?
No, its acceleration was primarily in reducing time needed to switch between complex patterns.
The primary objective of the Jacquard Loom was not to beat the speed of a perfected Power Loom when weaving simple, uniform cloth. A standard, optimized Power Loom dedicated to plain weaving likely maintained a higher linear speed for thread placement. The profound speed improvement introduced by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1801 lay specifically in the realm of complexity management. By using punched cards to automate the setup for elaborate patterns, the Jacquard Loom drastically cut down on the substantial downtime and specialized manual labor previously required to reconfigure the loom harnesses and treadles for each new design, making patterned goods viable at industrial speeds.
