Programming Jacquard's loom (1801)

16 years ago (wired.com)

I quote from the article "The idea of using punch cards to instruct and control a system became the basis of computer programming"

Good grief!

> Statistician Herman Hollerith used punch cards to tabulate data from the 1890 U.S. census. The cards evolved into the mid-20th century’s ubiquitous IBM cards that were used in early computing to store data as well as program the way the data would be processed.

Cunningly stepping over that whole WWII business.