The Lever of Riches, by Joel Mokyr is a fascinating book dense with quotable gems like the ones below:
"Like silk, worsteds were a delicate and relatively up-market fabric woven into patterns using the so-called Jacquard loom, one of the most sophisticated technological breakthroughs of the time. The Jacquard loom was perfected in 1801 by Joseph Marie Jacquard, a Lyons ilk weaver, following a century of efforts by French inventors to device a loom that could automatically weave patterns into fabric. The patterns were coded on cards by means of holes representing the information in a binary code. The cards were probed by rods connected to wires, transmitting the information embedded in them."
"What became known as the Jacquard loom was in fact invented by two Frenchmen in the late 1720s, One of them, Basile Bouchon, was the son of an organmaker, which is significant because the organ is the first direct application of the binary coding of information."
"The Jacquard loom inspired Charles Babbage in the design of his famous Analytical Engine and Richard Roberts in the design of a multiple-spindle machine..."
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