Joseph-Marie Jacquard was a weaver.  He was very familiar with the mechanical music boxes and pianolas, pianos played by punched paper tape, which had been around for some time.  One day he got the bright idea of adapting the use of punched cards to control his looms.  If you look carefully at the picture on the right, and those on the following slide, you can see a continuous roll of these cards, each linked to the other, the holes in them punched strategically to control the pattern of the weave in the cloth produced by the loom.  All the weaver had to do was work the loom without needing to think about the design of the cloth.  Brilliant!  Jacquard revolutionized patterned textile weaving.  His invention also provided a model for the input and output of data in the electro-mechanical and electronic computing industry. 

The picture of Jacquard on the left, based on a copper portrait, was woven with the aid of one of his machines!