The Jacquard Weave

In France in the 18th century, clothing with lots of fancy floral pot, fancy floral patterns was in style. This is really hard to weave manually on just an ordinary loom. So Joseph Marie Jacquard realized you could replace the children with punch cards. He put all those children out of work. But on the other hand, he greatly increased the reliability of the loom. It's impossible to say whether this was bad or not. The first luddides.