The Jacquard Loom: A Driver of the Industrial Revolution (2016)

An episode [1] of my favorite TV show ever, Connections [2], did a great job of showing what an important step the Jacquard loom was in getting to today's digital systems.

[1] https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3dvbkg

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series)

Came here to post this. Love James Burke's work! Connections is my all-time favorite documentary. It changed how I think about technological progress (or really, historical progress generally).

Frankly this article should have credited Burke since it reads like a summary of the Connections episode you mentioned. But I guess everybody steals from everybody.

Related discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8479430 (2014)

and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9993953 (2015).

Possibly of interest to others, Jacquard Loom also inspired a song by Boards of Canada:

https://bocpages.org/wiki/Jacquard_Causeway