Weaving Tapestries of Code
summary
Compares textile innovations to computing with concrete claims and artifacts: a spinning wheel cuts yarn work from 2,300 to 400 hours, French silk brocade takes 15–27 days by two weavers, a Jacquard image uses 24,000 punched cards versus ~4,000 for brocade, and Babbage’s analytical engine is built conceptually as a 5‑ton device with 180,000 moving parts. Traces Hollerith → IBM and 80‑column punch cards to IDE defaults, shows wartime knitting used as covert Morse/binary, demonstrates crocheted hyperbolic geometry, and links a brocade stitch generator on GitHub.
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chapters (28)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:22Why Textiles
- 3:33Charles Babbage
- 4:19Duke of Wellington
- 5:02French Secord
- 5:32Bouchon
- 6:56Shuttle
- 7:22Digesting Duck
- 8:48The French Revolution
- 9:28The Jacquard Loom
- 10:55Babbage
- 12:45Ada Lovelace
- 14:48Herman Hollerith
- 16:02The Industrial Revolution
- 16:24Knitting
- 16:53Women knitters
- 22:01Lorentz Manifold
- 23:03Klein Bottle
- 23:43Data Visualization
- 24:48Technology
- 25:19Programming Language
- 25:31Knitting vs Embroidery
- 26:06Full Knitting Language
- 26:45Do While
- 28:06Print out
- 28:27Linda Lucas
- 28:38TED Talk
- 30:11Contact Jen
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