Biography of 	Jacquard, Joseph Maria Orleans Parish, Louisiana
Submitted by 	Mike Miller September 2000

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There is a name which stands pre-eminently forward among the, four inventors of the modern
loom.  It is as dear to the Cotton Exchange of New Orleans as that of Bore' is to the Sugar
Exchange.  It is that of Joseph Maria Jacquard.  Born at Lyons, France, in 1752, he completed
in 1801 that invention which, applied to the loom, controlled every warp thread, by means of
which a throw of the shuttle would raise any number or group of the threads.  This invention
rendered the weaving of the most complicated patterns possible, and it stands to-day holding
that place in manufacture which it did in 1801, never to be excelled.  The flying shuttle and
picker-staff of John Kay (1735), may be said to have given place to the positive-motion shuttle
of James Lyall, but Jacquards' controller, which gave such possibilities to the loom, still
holds its place without fear of an usurper.  The inventor died at New Orleans in 1834, honored
by the city and the world of weavers.

Biographical and Historical Memoires of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 483.  Published by the
Goodspeed Publishing Company, Chicago, 1892.