"A door must be either open or shut!" Does the title of Alfred de Musset's play make him a forerunner of the binary system? That would be going too far: we either perform an action or we do not—nothing could be more commonplace. What matters is how the binary system can be used to control complex actions.
What is being woven…
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Joseph Marie Charles, known as Jacquard (1752–1834). Fabric woven in his memory on his loom.
The industrialist Jacquard had predecessors, but it was his machines—the looms—that mechanized the textile industry. Here is a simplified account of how they work: fabric is made by interlacing two sets of threads, the weft and the warp. The weft runs across the width, while the warp runs lengthwise. On the loom, the weft is wound onto a bobbin placed inside a shuttle. As the shuttle travels from one edge of the fabric to the other, it unwinds the weft beneath the raised warp threads and above those left down. After each pass, a reed beats the weft firmly against the preceding weft threads.
