Editing Punched card (section)

===Precursors===
[[File:DMM 29263ab Jacquardwebstuhl.jpg|thumb|Carpet loom with Jacquard apparatus by Carl Engel, around 1860. Chain feed is on the left.]]

[[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]].<ref name="Razy_1913"/> 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 [[shed (weaving)|shedding]] (raising and lowering the [[warp (weaving)|warp]]) and selecting the shuttle for a single pass.<ref name="OUP_2007"/>

[[Semyon Korsakov]] was reputedly the first to propose punched cards in informatics for information store and search. Korsakov announced his new method and machines in September 1832.<ref name="Jacquard"/>

[[Charles Babbage]] proposed the use of "Number Cards", "pierced with certain holes and stand[ing] opposite levers connected with a set of figure wheels ... advanced they push in those levers opposite to which there are no holes on the cards and thus transfer that number together with its sign" in his description of the Calculating Engine's Store.<ref name="Babbage_1837"/> There is no evidence that he built a practical example.

In 1881, [[Jules Carpentier]] developed a method of recording and playing back performances on a [[harmonium]] using punched cards. The system was called the ''Mélographe Répétiteur'' and "writes down ordinary music played on the keyboard dans le langage de Jacquard",<ref name="Southgate_1881"/> that is as holes punched in a series of cards. By 1887 Carpentier had separated the mechanism into the ''Melograph'' which recorded the player's key presses and the ''Melotrope'' which played the music.<ref name="Seaver_2010"/><ref name="Pianola_2016"/>