srean
16 hours ago
I am always pleasantly amused that many HN folks share with me a love for weaving, knitting and knotting; not to mention ropes.
Dang had once posted a long list of HN discussions on these topics.
I think there is something about them that squirts a little bit of dopamine in our pattern seeking, puzzle solving brains.
For me, one of draws was how does the symmetry of the woven pattern get weft into the cloth. Multi-shaft looms does it differently from, say, a Kashmiri rug.
When I had joined HN decades ago I had no idea that there would be this shared interest. Frankly, there were no reason for this to be the case.
Then one day this happened
don-bright
10 hours ago
Jaquard loom was one of the first machines that could operate based on a set of symbols / patterns encoded on a punched card. Computers ran on punched cards until the 1970s. Voting machines used punched cards until pretty recently (infamous "hanging chad" from 2000 US election).
shrubble
11 hours ago
The creator of SNOBOL and Icon programming languages, Ralph Griswold, also developed an interest in weaving and wrote about it; see for instance https://www.thelacebee.com/the-lace-notes/tess-the-professor...
srean
6 hours ago
Thanks for the link. I did not know about this before. I have been to the bibliography page linked from there many times before but did not know the Icon connection.
Got reminded of Durer's exquisite knot works.
8bitsrule
14 hours ago
Always good to learn more about the timeline of techniques lost in the mists of time. Some of the finest works of art were 'coded' in fibers, much more durable that most other media!
bitwize
9 hours ago
Including, inasmuch as you can consider it fine art, the ROM for the Apollo onboard computer! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_rope_memory
zem
14 hours ago
I think it's not just puzzle solving - for me it's the idea of creating something from raw materials where that something is itself a standard building block. it appeals to the same part of me that programming does.
mitthrowaway2
13 hours ago
I have heard it said that the word "technology" shares its roots with the word "textiles". Maybe it's not so surprising that there would be a shared interest as well!
shagie
13 hours ago
https://www.etymonline.com/word/*teks-
> Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to weave," also "to fabricate," especially with an ax, also "to make wicker or wattle fabric for (mud-covered) house walls."
> It might form all or part of: architect; context; dachshund; polytechnic; pretext; subtle; technical; techno-; technology; tectonic; tete; text; textile; tiller (n.1) "bar to turn the rudder of a boat;" tissue; toil (n.2) "net, snare."
> It might also be the source of: Sanskrit taksati "he fashions, constructs," taksan "carpenter;" Avestan taša "ax, hatchet," thwaxš- "be busy;" Old Persian taxš- "be active;" Latin texere "to weave, fabricate," tela "web, net, warp of a fabric;" Greek tekton "carpenter," tekhnē "art;" Old Church Slavonic tesla "ax, hatchet;" ...
echelon_musk
7 hours ago
According to William Dalrymple, India was once responsible for a third of the world's GDP, with the most advanced textile industry in the world before the East India Company dismantled it.
A Sanskrit origin is intriguing.
euroderf
6 hours ago
Hmm, Finnish has "tehdä" (to do,make,fabricate) with forms like "tekee" and "teko-".
Schmerika
5 hours ago
Huh; that seems like a way better etymology for the "tada!" flourish than any of the explanations in this rather heated discussion: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/33564/origin-of-...
segmondy
10 hours ago
where did you think punch cards came from? you know, the punch cards that we use to represent the first computer programs?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card. read the precursor section.
Basile Bouchon developed the control of a loom by punched holes in paper tape in 1725. The design was improved by his assistant Jean-Baptiste Falcon and by Jacques Vaucanson.[5] Although these improvements controlled the patterns woven, they still required an assistant to operate the mechanism.
In 1804 Joseph Marie Jacquard demonstrated a mechanism to automate loom operation. A number of punched cards were linked into a chain of any length. Each card held the instructions for shedding (raising and lowering the warp) and selecting the shuttle for a single pass.[6]
srean
43 minutes ago
Indeed.
To help debug the occasional 'dropped all the cards on the floor' accident, was the diagonal stripe across the side, after the cards have been stacked right.
This was used for computers for sure, not sure about the Jacquard looms.
With complete freedom in addressing (raising) any subset of the warps, these looms were very expressive. My favorite are multi shaft looms.
In a k-shaft loom you can only define k elementary subsets of all the warps. Makes for more interesting problem solving instances and mathematical structure.
mitthrowaway2
7 hours ago
Since you asked: That's exactly where I thought punch cards come from.