Читать книгу The Jacquard Machine Analyzed and Explained - E. A. Posselt - Страница 4

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The Jacquard machine was named after Joseph Marie Jacquard. Jacquard was born in Lyons, France, on the 7th of July, 1752. His parents were employed in the manufacture of silk fabrics. The first trade Jacquard learned was book-binding; type-founding and cutlery following successively. He was 20 years of age when his father died, leaving him a small house and hand-loom in the village of Cauzon, near Lyons. He commenced to invent different improvements in the line of weaving, but without other success than accumulating debt, compelling him to earn the living for himself and family, first in a plaster quarry at Bugey, near Lyons, afterwards by working at cutlery, type-founding and weaving in Lyons.

In 1792 he joined the Revolutionists, and after his return in the following year he and his son assisted in the defence of Lyons against the Army of the Convention, but left when his son was killed near him in battle.

Lyons Council offered him a room, for working on improvements for weaving at the “Palace of the Fine Arts,” with the condition that he should instruct scholars free of charge. During his stay there the Society of Arts, in London, offered a reward for a machine for making fishing nets. Jacquard succeeded in perfecting it, but had to travel under protection to Paris, where he had to show and explain his machine before the “Conservatorium of Arts and Trades.”

On the 2d of February, 1804, Jacquard received 3000 francs, and the gold medal from the London Society, and also an engagement in the Conservatorium of Arts, in Paris. Here he found opportunity for making improvements on his weaving machine, by the study of the older inventions of Bouchon, Falcon and Vancanson.

M. Bouchon, in 1725, employed a band of pierced paper pressed by a hand-bar against a row of horizontal wires, so as to push forward those which happened to lie opposite the blank spaces, and thus bring loops at the lower extremity of vertical wires in connection with a comb-like rack below. M. Falcon submitted in 1728 a chain of cards, and a square prism, known as the cylinder, in lieu of the band of paper of Bouchon. In 1745, Jacques de Vancanson suppressed altogether the cumbrous tail-cards of the draw-loom, and made the loom completely self-acting by placing the pierced paper or card upon the surface of a large pierced cylinder, which traveled backwards and forwards at each stroke, and revolved through a small angle by ratchet work. He also invented the rising and falling griffe, and thus made a machine very nearly resembling the actual Jacquard.

Jacquard returned to Lyons in the year 1804 to take charge of the work-house. During his stay at this place he finished his machine. He was an experienced workman, combining together the best parts of the machines of his predecessors in the same line, and succeeded as the first person in obtaining an arrangement sufficiently practical to be generally employed. In 1806 Napoleon Buonaparte changed his position, giving him an annuity of 3000 francs, but compelling him to transfer his invention to the city of Lyons, as well as any further inventions. Until 1810 Jacquard had great troubles, as his machine was not understood by the weavers. So violent was the opposition made to its introduction that he was compelled to leave Lyons in order to save his life. The Conseil des Prudhommes broke up his machines in the public places, and Jacquard was delivered over to universal ignominy. But after some years had passed the machine proved to be of the greatest value, and on the spot where the model was destroyed a statue to Jacquard now stands. He died August 7th, 1834, in Quillins, near Lyons, at 82 years of age. At the time of his death over 30,000 Jacquard machines were in operation in his native city.