Punchcards

At the linen museum we saw how they used to make damask linen on a jaquard loom. Damask is woven at different angles so the pattern catches the light in different ways. Punch cards were made to create the pattern. The design was copied on to graph paper, like this....

and then the worker would read the pattern....

and punch the holes into the card using this machine.....

Before Jaquard invented the punch card system boys used to sit on top of the looms. There was a man below who was reading the pattern. And there was a weaver who was passing the shuttle backwards and forwards through the threads. The pattern reader used to shout to the boys to raise or lower the threads and this is how the damask pattern was created.

The punchcards made the system automatic and the boys were no longer needed. This was the beginning of early mechanisation of the linen industry, even today our computers are based on the same binary system of on/off (open/closed)

We took portraits of each other looking through the punch cards

We found a picture of an organ grinder and saw people used to use the same system for making music

We found a tiny barrell organ in a match box which played "The Entertainer" We used this to make the impressions of the sound pattern on paper. the piece of paper was so tiny we couldn't photgraph it, but here is a picture of piercing through a punch card

and a picture of a page of braille which blind people use to read

We listened to the sounds of the loom and recorded our voices and improvised sounds in tracks over the rhythm of the loom sound.

We found out about a composer who was interested in the sounds of machines. His name was George Antheil. In 1924 Antheil composed a piece of music which used machines including aeroplane propellors, sirens and pianolas, it was called Ballet Mecanique. You can find out more about Antheil on the website www.antheil.org