What did Joseph Marie Jacquard perfect using perforated cards around 1804?
Answer
Automating patterns on his loom.
Joseph Marie Jacquard's innovation, perfected in France during the early 1800s, was directly applied to his automated loom mechanism. The stiff, perforated cards were linked together in chains, and the pattern of holes on these cards dictated the specific movement of the loom's warp threads. This action caused particular needles to operate, lifting or holding down threads to weave complex, pre-programmed designs into the fabric, marking the first widespread, successful deployment of programmed instructions using a removable medium in manufacturing.
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