Joseph Marie Jacquard, the inventor of the loom which bears his name, and to whom the extent and prosperity of the silk manufacture of our time is mainly due, was born at Lyons in 1752, of humble parents, both of whom were weavers. His father taught him to ply the shuttle; but for education of any other sort, he was left to his own devices. He managed to pick up some knowledge of reading and writing for himself; but his favourite occupation was the construction of little models of houses, towers, articles of furniture, and so on, which he executed with much taste and accuracy. On being apprenticed to a type-founder, he exhibited his aptitude for mechanical contrivances by inventing a number of improved tools for the use of the workmen. On his father's death he set up as a manufacturer of figured fabrics; but although a skilful workman, he was a bad manager, and the end of the undertaking was, that he had to sell his looms to pay his debts. He married, but did not receive the dowry with his wife which he expected, and to support his family had to sell the house his father had left him,—the last remnant of his little heritage. The invention of numerous ingenious machines for weaving, type-founding, &c., proved the activity of his genius, but produced not a farthing for the maintenance of his wife and child. He took service with a lime-maker at Brest, while his wife made and sold straw hats in a little shop at Lyons. He solaced himself for the drudgery of his labours by spending his leisure in the study of machines for figure-weaving. The idea of the beautiful apparatus which he afterwards perfected began to dawn on him, but for the time it was driven out of his mind by the stirring transactions of the time. The whirlwind of the Revolution was sweeping through the land. Jacquard ardently embraced the cause of the people, took part in the gallant defence of Lyons in 1793, fled for his life on the reduction of the city, and with his son—a lad of sixteen—joined the army of the Rhine. His boy fell by his side on the field of battle, and Jacquard, destitute and broken-hearted, returned to Lyons. His house had been burned down; his wife was nowhere to be heard of. At length he discovered her in a miserable garret, earning a bare subsistence by plaiting straw. For want of other employment he shared her labours, till Lyons began to rise from its ruins, to recover its scattered population, and revive its industry. Jacquard applied himself with renewed energy to the completion of the machine of which he had, before the Revolution, conceived the idea; exhibited it at the National Exposition of the Products of Industry in 1801; and obtained a bronze medal and a ten years' patent.

During the peace of Amiens, Jacquard happened to take up a newspaper in a cabaret which he frequented, and his eye fell on a translated extract from an English journal, stating that a prize was offered by a society in London for the construction of a machine for weaving nets. As a mere amusement he turned his thoughts to the subject, contrived a number of models, and at last solved the problem. He made a machine and wove a little net with it. One day he met a friend who had read the paragraph from the English paper. Jacquard drew the net from his pocket saying, "Oh! I've got over the difficulty! see, there is a net I've made." After that he took no more thought about the matter, and had quite forgotten it, when he was startled by a summons to appear at the Prefectal Palace. The prefect received him very kindly, and expressed his astonishment that his mechanical genius should so long have remained in obscurity. Jacquard could not imagine how the prefect had discovered his mechanical experiments, and began vaguely to dread that he had got into some shocking scrape. He stammered out a sort of apology. The prefect was surprised he should deny his own talent, and said he had been informed that he had invented a machine for weaving nets. Jacquard owned that he had.

"Well, then, you're the right man, after all," said the prefect. "I have orders from the emperor to send the machine to Paris."

"Yes, but you must give me time to make it," replied Jacquard.

In a week or two Jacquard again presented himself at the palace with his machine and a half manufactured net. The prefect was eager to see how it worked.

"Count the number of loops in that net," said Jacquard, "and then strike the bar with your foot."

The prefect did so, and was surprised and delighted to see another loop added to the number.

"Capital!" cried he. "I have his majesty's orders, M. Jacquard, to send you and your machine to Paris." "To Paris! How can that be? How can I leave my business here?"

"There is no help for it; and not only must you go to Paris, but you must start at once, without an hour's delay."

"If it must be, it must. I will go home and pack up a little bundle, and tell my wife about my journey, I shall be ready to start to-morrow."

"To-morrow won't do; you must go to-day. A carriage is waiting to take you to Paris; and you must not go home. I will send to your house for any things you want, and convey any message to your wife. I will provide you with money for the journey."

There was no help for it, so Jacquard got into the carriage, along with a gendarme who was to take charge of him, and wondered, all the way to Paris, what it all meant. On reaching the capital he was taken before Napoleon, who received him in a very condescending manner. Carnot, who was also present, could not at first comprehend the machine, and turning to the inventor, exclaimed roughly, "What, do you pretend to do what is beyond the power of man? Can you tie a knot in a stretched string?" Jacquard, not at all disconcerted, explained the construction of his machine so simply and clearly, as to convince the incredulous minister that it accomplished what he had hitherto deemed an impossibility.

Jacquard was now employed in the Conservatory of Arts and Manufactures to repair and keep in order the models and machines. At this time a magnificent shawl was being woven in one of the government works for the Empress Josephine. Very costly and complicated machinery was employed, and nearly £1000 had already been spent on it. It appeared to Jacquard that the shawl might be manufactured in a much simpler and less expensive manner. He thought that the principle of a machine of Vaucousin's might be applied to the operation, but found it too complex and slow. He brooded over the subject, made a great many experiments, and at last succeeded in contriving an improved apparatus.

He returned to Lyons to superintend the introduction of his machine for figure-weaving and the manufacture of nets. The former invention was purchased for the use of the people, and was brought into use very slowly. The weavers of Lyons denounced Jacquard as the enemy of the people, who was striving to destroy their trade, and starve themselves and families, and used every effort to prevent the introduction of his machine. They wilfully spoiled their work in order to bring the new process into discredit. The machine was ordered to be destroyed in one of the public squares. It was broken to pieces,—the iron-work was sold for old metal, and the wood-work for faggots. Jacquard himself had on one occasion to be rescued from the hands of a mob who were going to throw him into the Rhone. Before Jacquard's death in 1835, his apparatus had not only made its way into every manufactory in France, but was used in England, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and America. Even the Chinese condescended to avail themselves of this invention of a "barbarian."

Jacquard's apparatus is, strictly speaking, not a loom, but an appendage to one. It is intended to elevate or depress, by bars, the warp threads for the reception of the shuttle, the patterns being regulated by means of bands of punched cards acting on needles with loops and eyes. At first applied to silk weaving only, the use of this machine has since been extended to the bobbin net, carpets, and other fancy manufactures. By its agency the richest and most complex designs, which could formerly be achieved only by the most skilful labourers, with a painful degree of labour, and at an exorbitant cost, are now produced with facility by the most ordinary workmen, and at the most moderate price.

Of late years the silk manufacture has greatly improved, both in character and extent. The products of British looms exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1862 vied with those of the Continent. Every year upwards of £2,300,000 worth of silk is brought to England; and the silk manufacture engages some £55,000,000 of capital, and employs eleven to twelve hundred thousand of our population.