ELECTRIC JACQUARDS: THE FIRST HUNDRED YEARS

K. Hepworth Department of Textile Industries University of Leeds Leeds LS2 9JT

1 Introduction. The recent widespread use of computers and colour monitors in the representation and development of weave structures and in the simu­ lation of colour-and-weave effects has encouraged loom manufacturers to complete the chain of automation of fabric production by develop­ ing computer-controllable shedding mechanisms. These mostly take the form of electromagnetically actuated dobbies, although some jacquards are also available. Although activity in this field has accelerated during the past twenty years or so there is a history of over a hundred and thirty years of development of electric jacquards for weaving. It is apparent that almost as soon as the jacquard was established there was a desire to reduce the bulk and weight of the punched cards used for programming it and the expense of punching, linking and stor­ ing them. By 1833 a two-stage mechanism had been described that enabled a continuous band of paper to be substituted for the cards but punching was still needed. By the middle of the century an electrically conductive program, on which areas could be obscured by insulating paint, was being proposed in conjunction with electromagnetic methods of hook selection and at least one demonstrably operable machine re­ sulted. By the end of the century photographically prepared programs of a similar kind were being proposed albeit with a somewhat less el­ egant mechanism. This system resulted in, at least, a commercial card cutting service for the users of conventional jacquards. Two immedi-

ARS TEXTRINA 10 (1988), pp. 141-166 ately apparent advantages of electrical programming had been easier "editing" and the ability to introduce elementary switching logic to im­ pose weave interlacings on an electrically defined pattern or to combine colour selection with weave interlacing. Such elaborations were incor­ porated in many of the systems patented between 1900 and 1930 but the actual mechanisms that formed the interface between electrical and me­ chanical parts of the system were often crude and failed to acknowledge the limitations of electromagnets, especially when large arrays have to be used. Few of them are more convincing than those of the 1850's and there is direct evidence of only one inventor, T.A.B. Carver, suc­ cessfully using his ideas in industry. He did so on an impressive scale, weaving damask cloths on looms with 1800-hook capacity, electrically programmed, jacquards in the 1920's. Evidently the capital cost and problems of accommodating and main­ taining large arrays of magnetic actuators outweighed the generally per­ ceived advantages until the added benefits of electronic program prepa­ ration and storage tipped the balance. When that occurred the systems eventually developed (outside the timescale of the present survey) used electromagnetic selectors to retain rather than to move the healds—an arrangement foreshadowed in very few of the earlier inventions although it was a feature of the very first, unsuccessful, electric jacquard. This survey sets out to trace the development of both programming systems and selection mechanisms during the first hundred years of elec­ tric jacquards and to quote contemporary comments about them. It is based primarily on British Patents and British textile journals but makes reference to some U.S. patents that did not have British counterparts. It does not attempt to trace the continental ancestry of inventions that eventually were described in British Patents nor to search for evidence of others that might not have been the subject of British Patent applica­ tions. Thus it can not claim to be comprehensive; but it does reveal some interesting and well thought out systems, some of which were commer­ cially exploited and some frequently reinvented, and, possibly, some that are currently being reinvented. To assist understanding and critical comparison of the various lines of development the basic principles of shed-programming are first briefly set out.

142 2 Mechanical shed-programming. hi order to produce a woven structure the previously assembled sheet of warp threads has to be 'shed'—that is, parted to form two sheets between which the weft can be passed. Each warp thread passes through a 'heald' by which it can be manipulated and the healds are controlled in smaller or larger groups by being attached to cords suspended from a jacquard or to a frame or heald 'shaft' controlled by a dobby. Programming a weave means programming a shedding action, causing each heald to move to the upper or lower of its two positions prior to the insertion of weft through the shed. How it moves is irrelevant as regards the weave structure, only its destination matters; but how it moves may be highly relevant from a commercial viewpoint because that may influence the speed at which the loom can operate. Thus, on the early power looms, the shedding that had been performed manually on hand looms was per­ formed first by eccentrics and then by suitably shaped cams ('tappets' in weaving terminology). These controlled both the 'where' and the 'how' of the operation—they exercised analogue control over the healds. The need for greater variety in patterning led to the introduction of digital methods evolved for the hand loom, assembled into the most widely used and known form by Jacquard, and eventually applied to the power loom. There, cranks or cams provided the movement and it was transmitted to the healds at the dictate of a program. Typically, lift­ ing bars or 'knives' were driven so as to oscillate between the positions corresponding to the two shed positions. The healds were suspended from hooks that could be put into or out of the path of a knife by a small transverse movement that required little force. Thus a small amount of power was used to connect the healds to a much larger source of power that could raise or lower them—a purely mechanical switch or relay. The transverse movement of the hooks was provided by an array of thin wire 'needles' that were capable of being pushed by a punched card that carried the weave program. There was a need also for a more robust machine of smaller pattern­ ing capacity. This, the dobby, controlled up to thirty-six heald shafts as compared with the several hundred cords of the jacquard, but it also con­ sisted of an array of mechanical switches that connected the heald shafts selectively to a source of reciprocating movement originating in a crank

143 or a cam. The widely used mechanism of Hattersley and Smith [1] was directly derived from the jacquard, having hooks that could be engaged with reciprocating knives. An alternative to the 'reciprocating' dobby was the 'rotary' type, typified by the designs of Knowles [2] and Leem- ing [3]. In these switching took place, before the rotary movement had been converted to reciprocating movement, by engaging or disengaging mutilated gears.

2.1 Mechanical switches. These mechanical switches had to meet two requirements. Like all swit­ ches they had to have clearly defined states; in this case 'on' and 'off' meant engaged or disengaged, and the mechanism had to be designed to exclude any intermediate state. Secondly, to ensure that the power needed for switching could be much less than that being switched, the switching action had to take place when the transmission was not under load. Thus the hooks of the jacquard have an alternative means of sup­ port when they are rocked into or out of the path of the lifting knife; and the driven gears of the rotary dobbies are moved to or from the engag­ ing position when the plain side of the mutilated driving gear is toward them—that is, when driving could not be taking place. It is also desirable, to avoid shock and consequent wear, and to per­ mit higher speeds, that engagement should occur at low speed and the engaged members then accelerate smoothly together. The reciprocating dobbies are inherently capable of satisfying this requirement as switch­ ing takes place very close to the extremity of reciprocation. Rotary dob­ bies have only relatively recently begun to meet this requirement. In the Staubli [4] and related designs a sliding key is used to engage an eccentric to a driving shaft that is briefly brought to rest or even slightly reversed to permit easy engagement. Progress is nicely illustrated in the designs of Crabtree [5] in 1889, Edelstein and Kis [6] of 1928 and Hintsch and Julich [7] of 1985. These use almost identical pivoted keys to engage a crank or eccentric to a drive shaft, but the first has a con­ tinuously rotating shaft, the second a reciprocating one and the third a superposition of rotation and reciprocation that causes the drive shaft to pause at the time of engagement.

144 2.2 Multistage switches. Given a device that permits a small source of power to switch a large one, then by cascading such devices the small source may itself be switched by an even smaller one. The devices need not be simply mechanical, although it has been argued [8] that in the case of loom shedding mech­ anisms it is not practicable or economic to make the final switch other than mechanical, unless the loom is so large [9] that the use of a sep­ arate switched motor for each heald shaft is justified. Given a suitable transducer the earlier stages of such cascades may consist of electrical or electronic switches. The two-stage jacquard has long been familiar from the machines produced by Verdol [10] but the same basic idea had been the subject of at least three earlier patents. The aim in each case was to substitute punched paper programs for the rather heavy and bulky cards of the jacquard and to avoid card lacing by using a continuous belt of paper (plastic in modem versions). To prevent the paper being damaged by the jacquard needles a miniature jacquard was interposed to actuate the needles of the main one, the paper being well able to withstand the pres­ sure of the more delicate first-stage needles. In 1833 Jacques Francis Victor Gerrard [11] "of Mile End in the County of Middlesex" proposed such a system in which a grooved presser-board replaced the jacquard card. The first-stage needles deflected the main ones so that they either were struck by the ridges or entered the grooves of that board. Later, in 1849, Clement Augustus Kurtz [12] of Wands worth gave a detailed account of a similar system in which the main needles were hinged so their outer ends could be deflected. The same machine was to be used for punching, and hence copying, paper tape. Acklin [13] in 1855 has similar needles that could be deflected into the spaces between a grid of horizontal bars that otherwise pushed them and urged them away from the knives. An interesting additional feature was the ability to invert an instruction; by punching a particular hole the grid could be caused to rise one half space on the following cycle and thus reverse the role of holes and blanks in the punched program. In this way a coupe matrice— the cracking or tearing of the paper along a heavily punched row—was avoided, because only the lightly punched complement of the required row need then be produced.

145 The two-stage switching principle has been applied not only in jac- quards but to enable plastic belts to replace the pegged wooden lags or metal program lattices in dobbies. Outside the field of shed-programming, multi-stage cascades of switches form the basis of broken or missing thread detectors that enable the absence of a single thread to cause the loom to stop.

3 Electromagnetic shed-programming. Given a system that relies on an array of multistage mechanical switches it requires only suitable transducers to permit electrical and, perhaps, electronic switches to replace the earlier stages. In fact, the first elec­ tromagnetic jacquard seems to have failed because it used only a single stage. Gaetano Bonelli, Director of the Sardinian Telegraph Company is reported to have constructed in 1852, and demonstrated in Turin in 1853, a jacquard in which, according to the British Patent [14], the 'keepers' which replaced the normal hooks were carried up to, and retained by, en­ ergized magnets that had directly to support the pull of the warp threads. To prevent them sticking when the current was switched off a thin layer of paper had to be interposed between each keeper and its magnet. The program, which was formed by painting areas of a conducting sheet with an insulating varnish and read by contact probes also seems of doubt­ ful reliability, especially in a mill environment. However, this form of program continued to be advocated and was apparently used with some success by later inventors. In series with each probe was a switch, one contact of which was dis­ placed by a secondary, mechanical, program or "pattern surface". The purpose was to select, from the threads to be lifted, only those that were to pass over a particular colour of weft, then, on the next cycle, those to pass over a second colour and so on. Although the operation of this jacquard was not reliable its invention demonstrates the interest in, and the perceived need for, such machines. It also introduced elementary switching logic that was to be used later, not only for introducing colours to a basic pattern, but also for superimposing weave interlacing instruc­ tions on those that defined the basic pattern. Further developments followed quickly. In 1856 a patent [15] ob­ tained on behalf of Louis Bolmida described a complete loom incorpo-

146 rating an electromagnetic jacquard and weft colour selector. Bolmida was described as President of the Electro-weaving Company of Turin in the Kingdom of Sardinia. The comprehensive drawings presented in this patent have the appearance of true working drawings. The normal jacquard arrangement was modified only insofar as needles, instead of pushing hooks clear of the knives, were used to prevent them being im­ pelled on to the knife by springs. Parallel to each needle was a spindle that carried a projection. This spindle could be rotated through 90° so that the projection impeded or failed to impede the normal movement of the needle. A second projection on its other end acted as armature for an electromagnet. The array of spindles was carried in a frame that was moved so as to bring all the armatures on to their respective magnets. When the frame retreated those magnets that were energized retained their armatures causing the spindles to rotate and so no longer impede the needles which therefore took the hooks on to the knives. This two- stage system appears practicable because the reaction of the needles, being parallel to the spindle, would not oppose the effect of the magnet. Once again the program was formed by insulating paint on a con­ ductive surface, this time of metallized paper, and colour selection was programmed by additional conductive strips on the edge of the main sheet—an arrangement also described in a patent application by Vin- cenzi [16]. The probes were to be raised while the program was ad­ vanced so as to avoid abrasion of the metal film, and power was to be connected only within the contacting period so as to avoid damage by sparking. There was even an element of multiplexing, in that the dimen­ sions of the metal rods were such that different rows of armatures were drawn away from their magnets in sequence so that rows of magnets could be energized successively rather than simultaneously, so permit­ ting the use of "a weaker battery". In spite of this evidently well designed machine of Bolmida's it was Bonelli who, in England at least, obtained the most publicity when he emerged in 1860 with a still more elegant system. This was reported [17] in January of that year and was described, demonstrated and dis­ cussed [18] at a meeting of the Society of Arts in London on February 15th. The British Patent [19] is dated two days later. Bonelli, now, incidentally described as "gentleman, of Milan" based his system on a "universal"—what would now be termed "programmable"—jacquard

147 card. This was a metal plate having the format of, but being thicker than, a jacquard card and having a cylindrical hole opposite the end of each needle. Within the holes were small rods or pistons shaped like bolts or rivets that could be positioned with their heads outside or inside the plate. The plate was presented to the needles like a normal jacquard card. When it was withdrawn the pistons were manipulated into the plate and their other ends brought into contact with a bank of electromag­ nets. When the 'card' moved forward again those pistons not retained by energized magnets assumed hole-blocking positions and caused their needles to push their hooks off the lifting knives. Colour selection and other refinements follow those of Bolmida's patent. Whether the two were rivals or collaborators is not clear.

4 The response to the electric jacquard. The account [17] of Bonelli's machine published on January 6th 1860 stated that it could be seen working in the rooms of the Magnetic Tele­ graph Company in Threadneedle Street, London. Program preparation was said to show a saving in cost of seventy percent to eighty percent and a saving in time of eighty percent to ninety percent as compared with a normal jacquard. Other advantages claimed were that the pattern woven could be elongated by simply reducing the speed at which the paper passed under the "teeth" or probes that read the pattern and that the apparatus could be added to an existing jacquard. Two weeks later a correspondent commented [20] that the invention would "entirely alter the character of woven designs in as much as artists of power who have no technical knowledge ofmise en carte drawing are, by its means, enabled to dispense with technical knowledge . . .". He went on to point out that our schools of design had been of little use to manufacturers owing to their having failed to teach the technicalities of the weavers art; but now with design set free from the trammels of the loom he looked forward to a vast array of designs of style and character at the Exhibition of 1862. Although he anticipated objections to the introduction of this aid from those engaged in reading-off patterns and preparing cards, he warned that opposition would be attended by defeat as surely as was the opposition to Dr. Cartwright that had led to the burning of the mill at Manchester in 1791.

148 The paper describing Bonelli's invention [18] was read to the Soci­ ety of Arts on February 15th by the Secretary, P. Le Neve Foster, M.A., in the presence of the inventor who was prepared to respond in French to questions. It traces developments from the drawboy, through the barrel loom and indexing machine, to the jacquard and hence to the new inven­ tion which is dealt with in considerable detail. In the ensuing discussion much enthusiasm was expressed for the machine and its potentialities but members were also quick to seize on its possible disadvantages. For the carpet trade it was stated that the cost saving would be much less than had been estimated, and the need to make separate selection of the ends crossing different colours of weft would slow down the weaving process. Most advantage was envisaged in the silk trade, but ribbon weavers would need to be able to handle many more colours than could the present machine; also the 400-hook capacity would need to be tre­ bled. There were doubts about the durability of the metallized paper program and it was suggested that attention be diverted to reducing the cost of cutting conventional cards. Nevertheless, hopes were expressed that the introduction of a machine of this nature would help compensate for the fifteen percent loss of income the ribbon weavers would suffer by the imminent removal of protection. Suspicions were voiced as to why the invention had not been offered, and whether it would be offered to the French manufacturers. The secretary, offering reassurance on these points was at pains to point out that M. Bonelli, in spite of his use of the French language was not a Frenchman but a Sardinian. Bonelli was, by this time, known as the inventor of a forerunner of the printed circuit ("metal lines ruled on paper") which he had used in forming galvanometer coils and electromagnets and a kind of "third rail" system to permit telegraphic communication between moving trains. The Journal of the Society of Arts records his death which took place on 30th September 1867. During the period just reviewed there was another report of an elec­ tric jacquard, the significance of which is difficult to assess. The Me­ chanics Magazine of March 25, 1854 has a brief report [21], translated from a French journal, of a meeting of the Agricultural Society of Lyons in France, at which the invention of two local men, Messrs. Pascal and Mathieu was described. The account of their machine is preceded by a summary of Bonelli's first machine, of the previous year, that gives little

149 confidence in the description of the new design, because it implies that the pattern cylinder itself carried the magnets that supported the hooks. The new method is said to reduce the current consumption by having the magnets cause the hooks to rotate about their own axes. On the face of it, this describes the arrangement introduced by the firm of Verdol [22] in the 1980's; but if the account has omitted stages of the mechanism, as it did in describing its predecessor, it could well be that it is the same as that described in Bolmida's patent two years later, in which the mag­ nets caused intermediate cranked rods to rotate about their axes and so impinge, or not, on the needles.

5 Photographic pattern preparation. The looms of Bonelli and Bolmida appear to receive no further men­ tion in the literature, nor does any machine of a similar nature feature in British Patents for the next thirty years In 1896, however, there appears the first of a series of patents in the names of Szczepanik and Klein- berg, described as engineer and banker (later manufacturer) respectively. Their general objective was the weaving of pictures or other complex patterns using photographic or other optical means to convert the art­ work into a program that could then, by electromagnetic means, control a jacquard and associated equipment to reproduce the pattern or picture in the form of a woven fabric. The heart of their first proposed mechanism [23] was a flat spring leaf or tongue that could be attracted on to an electromagnet but which otherwise engaged in a notch in the side of a flat strip that formed the jacquard hook. The arrangement is similar to methods introduced in the 1960's for programming knitting machines and shows some similar­ ity with more recent mechanisms of Oerlikon [24] and Bonas [25] for loom jacquards. In Szczepanik's arrangement the hooks were pressed down against a spring and retained there by the tongue engaging in the notch. On withdrawal of the tongue by the magnet the hook was raised by the spring to a level at which a second notch, higher up the hook, was brought into the path of a lifter. In proposing a new arrangment later the same year the inventors comment that "looms of this kind are well known but they have not hith­ erto been in general use owing to the fact that application of the afore-

150 mentioned electric arrangements to jacquards was impossible without substantial alteration to their construction". This comment was hardly valid in relation to Bonelli's programmable card. The new arrangement [26] was a conventional jacquard in which the needles were spring- loaded to place the hooks over the knives, but each needle carried a projection by means of which it could be displaced to take the hook clear of the knife and a hooked end by means of which it could be retained in that displaced position by the latching action of a spring blade. An electromagnet was carried to the blade and, if energized, on returning drew it away from the needle, releasing that to spring back and place the hook over the knife. Carrying the magnet to the spring blade al­ lowed "even weak magnets to be used". To ensure a reasonably constant and equal current through all magnets a resistor or incandescent lamp was to be connected in series with each. A refinement of the mecha­ nism to improve the magnetic circuit and reduce current consumption was described in 1900 [27]. The familiar metallized paper program and means for driving it and protecting it from mechanical and electrical damage had been proposed but the intention was to prepare the pro­ gram by photographic means, adopting techniques already in use for colour printing [28]. Negatives obtained by photographing the pattern through colour filters were to be projected through "weave interlacing plates" on to a screen on which images could be superimposed to form the weave diagrams. By methods similar to those since used for pro­ ducing printed circuit boards a copper-on-glass program was produced to control the jacquard. An alternative outlet for the process was the control of a jacquard mechanism to operate a card cutter that prepared cards for use on conventional jacquards [29]. A commercial card cut­ ting service based on such a machine was offered by the Textile Design Company of Valley Works, Bradford. Both the invention and the service received considerable publicity in the press [30]. Accounts of them had been introduced into the courses for the Teachers Class at the Yorkshire College (later the University of Leeds) in 1899 and they had formed the subject of a public lecture presented to mark the inauguration of evening classes and attended by about six hundred manufacturers and experts from all over the country [31]. Photographic program preparation did not necessarily imply electric operation of the jacquard. The use of etched metal plates was proposed

151 to program a two-stage mechanical jacquard in which the first stage nee­ dles discriminated between the heights of the etched and unetched por­ tions of the surface. But the filling of the etched portions with insulating material to make a card suitable for an electric jacquard was also sug­ gested [32].

6 The damask loom. There had been two other contributors to the literature in 1896. Elmer Gates [33] of Chevey Chase, Maryland, U.S.A., patented a loom in which all the basic operations were to be performed by solenoids; but the shed-programming was virtually a return to Bonelli's first unsuc­ cessful method. The other [34], by T.A.B. Carver of Glasgow, related specifically to an electromagnetic jacquard. Spring-loaded needles were used to push the hooks clear of the knives unless the other ends of the needles were obstructed. Those ends were aligned with holes in the two sides of a channel shaped member, between which the 'keepers' of elec­ tromagnets were carried onto their magnets by a vertically oscillating bar. Those keepers that were retained by energized magnets obstructed the passage of the needles across the channel and kept the correspond­ ing hooks engaged with their knives; the other keepers descended again, permitting their needles to urge their hooks clear of the knives. An ad­ dition to the basic design made the machine operate in the manner of a Bessbrook or twilling jacquard. The existing Bessbrook jacquard was intended specifically for the weaving of damask fabrics in which large floral or geometric designs are formed from yarns of a single colour by the use of warp-faced and weft-faced areas that reflect light differently. The pattern is formed by raising all the warp threads or all the weft threads in the areas designated by the main program, except where a subsidiary program, sometimes permanently built in to the jacquard, overrides the main program. This imposes interlacing in the form of a sateen or twill, thus converting the pattern areas into warp-faced and weft-faced weaves. Carver produced the interlacing in his jacquard by means of a pro­ grammable electromagnetic inverter. Each of his electromagnets had two balanced and opposed windings, the energization of the first of which was controlled by the now usual probes reading a conductive pro-

152 gram that carried the main design. If this winding were not energized a magnetic field could be produced by energization of the opposed wind­ ing; but if the first had been energized the effect of energizing the second would be to cancel the field. The array of 'opposed' windings was con­ nected to a power supply via cam operated switches, the cams for which were like miniature shedding cams arranged to produce sateen or twill weaves. In a further refinement [36] Carver specified an alternating cur­ rent supply for all the windings, caused to decay gradually at the end of each period of energization so as to avoid residual magnetism. The first indication of the commercial exploitation of the electric jacquard in Britain came in articles [37] that described such a twilling jacquard built by Carver Looms of Glasgow and operated at the Dublin Exhibition of 1907 by the Greenmount Spinning Company. Illustrations of the complete loom were published and close-up views of the painted program bands but no details of the mechanism are shown. This may have differed from that just described, because a patent of 1910 in the names of Textile Appliances Limited and T.A.B. Carver [38] describes a modification and presents timing diagrams for the various parts. There is also described a new arrangement in which one swinging member performs both the functions of raising the ends of the needles to theelec- tromagnets and, on its return stroke, driving those that have not been re­ tained by energized magnets into contact with the hooks. The declared aim was an attachment that could be fitted to an existing jacquard and which was of modular construction to permit any damaged section to be removed and replaced easily. Another invention [39] emanating from Glasgow at this time and al­ most certainly associated with Carver's loom was Macquiston's reader for metallized paper programs. It consisted of wire feelers, sewn to­ gether and clamped between insulating blocks, the spacing being set by the thickness of the sewing thread in the same way that the binding cord determines the pitch of a reed. The reader was said to be suitable for use with electric jacquards, pianos and other musical instruments and advertizing signs.

153 7 Mechanical and electrical logic. The use of an inverter to avoid a coupe matrice in Acklin's jacquard [13] or to superimpose a weave interlacing in the Bessbrook jacquard, either mechanically or, in Carver's case, electromagnetically, are exam­ ples of simple logic devices that could more readily be incorporated into an electric control system. Handwerck [40] proposed to eliminate the extra mechanism needed for the damask loom by transferring the impo­ sition of the weave interlacing to either the card cutting or the selection stage of the jacquard by using series switches in the circuits energizing the magnets. However, he does not confine himself to these methods and in a patent, that runs to forty-four pages, fifty-five diagrams and sixty-six claims, describes a variety of methods for combining patterns and weaves that extend from switching electrical cicuits to having the needles bear on superimposed cards. Carver's loom was referred to in a paper [41] read at the Manch­ ester Engineering Exhibition of 1911 by Frank Nasmith who described it as using photographically-produced metallized paper programs. He mentions that an Austrian professor had introduced a similar program­ ming method some years earlier that had not been successful because it had been ahead of its time. He may have been referring to the work of Szczepanik already described, but there had also emerged a similar project by Professor August Regal. He and colleagues in Bosnia set out to reproduce paintings in the form of woven fabrics [42]. Photo­ graphically formed conductive programs were to be used to manipulate sections of the knives on a jacquard, three programs being used to select the interfacings for eight colours of yarn. Their interest, initially at least, seems to have been in producing works of art rather than manufactur­ ing mass-produced textiles because the program readers were scanned sequentially by a stepper switch [43]. By 1911 Regal had a two-stage mechanism [44] in which the armatures were in the form of spring blades or clips that, when attracted into their coils, wedged there until they were mechanically released before the next cycle of operation, thus permit­ ting the period of energization to be reduce. About this time there began an association between Regal and Siemens organization that led to a se­ ries of designs that had a more professional air about them. They were not unlike Carver's machines, using a conductive program for the main

154 design and lag chain-controlled switches to form the weave, the latter being fed from a second power supply [45]. Apparently balanced and opposed power supplies replaced Carver's balanced and opposed wind­ ings. Problems were evidently encountered (especially, they remark, if one supply were accidentally connected to the other) because they later [46] introduced mechanical logic to impose the binding weave on the design. In the meantime they had modified the two stage jacquard [47] so that it lay somewhere between Bonelli's 1860 design and that of Carver of 1896. To reduce wear on the reading system and avoid the formation of flats on the probes the latter were made like miniature swivelling castors that could be easily replaced. Further rationalization of the mechanical, electromagnetic and electrical switching logic was being attempted [48] when the onset of the Great War obscured this par­ ticular line of development.

8 The electric jacquard before 1914. hi addition to the continuing work of Carver and Regal the extent of interest in devising and improving electric jacquards is illustrated by the range of countries in which patented inventions originated. Julius Kruger [49] of Friedenau proposed a device similar to Bonelli's pro­ grammable card to act not on the jacquard needles but directly on the hooks. Pieter Matthijsen [50] of Endhoven used subsidiary circuits that he claimed enabled economies in electromagnets to be made. Giulio Corsi [51] of Milan must have considered himself to be unlucky in be­ ing made to reduce his claim for a jacquard design to merely that of increasing magnet efficiency by enclosing his coils in an iron sleeve. A Barcelona weaver [52] described an electromagnetic card punch and card copier while Alfred Brunn of Berlin [53], anticipating the age of robotics envisaged a 'slave' loom in which all the mechanisms, includ­ ing those of shedding, exactly copied those of the master. Those were to be monitored by contacts that caused electromagnets to be energized, hence light beams to be modulated and hence copper strips to be etched photographically to produce programs that would, via further electro­ magnets control the slaves. Yet an eighty-two-part series of articles in the Textile Manufacturer [54] devoted to jacquard and harness arrangements seems not to have

155 acknowledged the existence of electric jacquards; they had clearly made little impact on the weaving industry.

9 Post-war developments. The two major centres of pre-war development were still active in the post-war scene, though Siemens-Regal still trailed behind Carver. Their 1921 patent [55] describes a two-stage jacquard in which the first-stage needles are controlled by electromagnets to produce the figure, which they do by deflecting the second-stage needles (as in the Acklin and Verdol systems) so that they impinge, not on a moving grid but on one or other set of alternate rows of a pattern card. The two sets determine the weave interlacings for the different areas of the figure. By this time the Carver loom was reported as being "in extensive use" [56] at Ulster Works of John S. Brown and Sons in Belfast. The nor­ mal arrangement was to mount three 600-hook jacquards of the Carver Bessbrook type on each loom. Photographically produced conductive programs were used and the looms ran at 120 picks per minute. Carver continued to explore the application of electricity to loom controls, par­ ticularly broken thread detectors. But his only additional work on the jacquard seems to have been an idea [57] for bringing the whole mech­ anism down to warp-sheet level and making, in effect, programmable healds, each heald being electromagnetically engagable with either a 'ground' or a 'figure' lifter. This kind of arrangement has since found application in "travelling wave" type multiphase looms [58] where shed­ ding is sequential across the loom and a small travelling selector, electro­ magnetically actuated and similar to those used in computer controlled knitting machines is employed. All the arrangements mentioned so far have used conductive pro­ gramming belts and contacting probes. An alternative type of program [59] used metal studded cards or plates and described a method for feed­ ing separate stacked cards serially to a reader. The pattern could be changed by inserting or withdrawing cards from the stack. By the mid 1920's interest in electric jacquards seemed to be wan­ ing. A 1926 claim [60] for armature-obstructed needles in an ordinary jacquard does not seem particularly novel. Although Siemens were proposing [61] the use of photo-resistive cells to read printed rather than

156 conductive or perforated programs, there use in jacquards was a sub­ sidiary proposal to their main intended application to statistical or ticket printing machinery. Carver [62] did have one further jacquard patent but it related to the use of springs instead of weights (lingoes) to provide the downward pull on the healds and so reduce the inertia of the system, and even that idea had been suggested seventy years earlier [63].

10 Electrostatic selection. All the electrically operated jacquards referred to so far used electromag­ nets as transducers. However, a paper [64] published in 1923 drew at­ tention to an effect that became known, after the authors, as the Johnsen- Rahbek effect. If a conductive surface is in intimate contact with the sur­ face of a material having high electrical resistance ("semiconductive" in the author's terminology) then the application of a fairly modest poten­ tial difference between the two gives rise to an attractive force that can greatly enhance the friction forces between the surfaces. E. Van Bree of Bonn proposed to make use of this effect in a jacquard [65] because, he said, electromagnetic jacquards "consume much current, are of vo­ luminous construction and are very expensive". In his design the hooks became Y shaped spring leaves constrained between lifters of "semi- conductive" material so that polarization produced a locking effect that enabled the healds to be lifted. The use of the Johnsen-Rahbeck effect has been proposed in at least one more recent patent as a means of causing belts selectively to grip rollers or pulleys with which they were in contact and hence to raise heald shafts [66].

11 Developments in programs. Conductive programs, usualy of metallized paper, had been proposed al­ most exclusively for the first seventy years or so of the electric jacquard and had been used on Carver's working looms. Yet, without the avail­ ability of simple bistable switches that could mitigate the effects of in­ termittent contact by the reading probes, these methods must surely have given rise to problems under mill conditions where oxidation of the cop­ per and contamination of the whole system by fibre and grease would be

157 difficult to avoid. The use of photoresistive cells in programming ma­ chines for various purposes has already been referred to, and photocells with triode amplifiers were to be used to read weave diagrams by re­ flected light according to a later patent [67] for a card punch. A similar reader was used [68] to translate weave diagrams into electrical signals that could be recorded magnetically on steel tape that then formed the program for a jacquard. In yet another system [69] proposed for use with statistical machines and jacquards the data were impressed in the form of minute holes in cards through which spark discharge was caused to en­ ergize high-resistance relays. The ability to read rapidly-moving cards was an advantage claimed for this method.

12 Refinement and stagnation. The first electric jacquard had relied upon magnetic forces to support the warp threads. Inventors had soon realized that at least one step of mechanical force amplification was needed in a practicable system— that is, the magnet should operate on the needles, or in some other way, to engage the hooks on to the knives; and in some cases two mechani­ cal stages had been used to achieve economy in electromagnetic force and hence in energizing current. This was desirable to permit minia­ turization without causing overheating and to reduce the strain on the programming system. Carrying the control elements to the electromag­ nets which then only had to retain or release them was also helpful in reducing current requirements and, perhaps more important, limiting the period for which the current had to be supplied. In the cycle of operation of a switching mechanism such as a jacquard there is a critical point at which engagement is achieved. If an electromagnet is to actuate a se­ lector it must be activated for a sufficiently long period to ensure that the required movement is completed and held under 'worst case' con­ ditions of timing of all relevant actions. If however the electromagnet is only required to release a selector just prior to the critical time, then a brief pulse of current will suffice and synchronization problems are largely avoided. In recent times a spring-loaded element retained by a permanent magnet has been released when the field of that magnet was briefly cancelled by a pulse of current through an adjacent coil [24,70]. In the 1930's a spring or gravity-loaded mechanical latch was usually

158 released by action of an electromagnet. Jones [71] had an arrangement by which needle actuators were held in an active position by latches that were released by electromagnets. A jacquard of otherwise normal construction had successive rows of needles progressively increased in length so that actuators could be accommodated on a stepped carrier that served as a programmable card. The actuators were flat metal strips hanging more or less vertically from horizontal pivots. They were me­ chanically raised above the horizontal position so that when the carrier moved forward they would fail to push the needles and were latched there by leaf springs that entered notches in the strips. Energization of an electromagnet withdrew the spring, permitting the associated strip to fall to a position in which it would push the needle. A conductive pro­ gram prepared by photographing a pattern through weave screens was specified [72]. Hamilton [73] used an electromagnet to withdraw a bolt that otherwise latched a heald to a lifter, while Means [74], foreshad­ owing the use of permanent magnets, had permanently energized coils selectively neutralized by oppositely wound coils that were energized via a program reader. This method was similar to that used by Carver to impose weave interfacings in his damask loom, but here used to give the program-controlled coils a releasing rather than holding role. Stoehr [75] however reverted to the use of electromagnetically-positioned stops to locate spring-loaded needles in his double-plush loom. During the same period there had appeared yet another series of patents relating to a complete designing system. This time it was from Japan, and, like the Szczepanik-Kleinberg and the Siemens-Regal sys­ tems before it, it seems to have been dedicated to the relatively slow production of very complex designs. Nakashini and Nakashini [76] pro­ posed a photoelectric scanning machine that would produce signals re­ lated to the shade of grey in a photograph or painted pattern. The result­ ing signals were fed to an array of electromagnetic relays arranged to carry out an analogue-to-digital conversion, and hence actuated electro­ magnets that caused a shed to be formed, and selected a colour of weft. In the jacquard (or in a card cutter that was also described) the hook- controlling needles were retained, against the pull of a spring by latches that were released when struck by one of four small hammers. These were symmetrically arranged on a carrier that rotated about and trav­ elled along a screwed rod at such a rate that each hammer was capable

159 of striking every fourth latch. This multiplexing allowed three-quarters of a revolution for each hammer to be reset by an electromagnet to its 'hit' or 'miss' position. On what was described as a "brocade" loom provision was made to impose a regular weave interlacing on the design by means of mechanically operated switches. Another design that used a travelling actuator was described in one of a series of patents by Tandler and Fisher [77]. A heald-supporting lever was pivoted on a horizontal shaft adjacent to a second, mechani­ cally oscillated, lever. The two moved together unless the former was retained in the up position by a selector. An array of such selectors was scanned by a travelling bistable hammer that was electromagnetically operated in accordance with a program. The device was proposed as a jacquard for looms or other machines and it is clear from their other patents that the inventors had knitting machines primarily in mind. That is not surprising, because the alternative to the "scanning" actuator is to employ a large number of electromagnets with consequent bulk and expense and conversion of electrical energy into heat. Scanning on a loom jacquard makes operation very slow but on a knitting machine it is achieved naturally as part of the relative movement of cams and needles. Indeed it was not until virtually the centenary of Bonelli's first demon­ stration that another British Patent appeared for an electric jacquard for a power loom [78]. This was an American invention in which electro­ magnets pulled the hooks, via a wire link, on to the knives—part of an electric loom in which shuttle-mounted electric motors were to generate in the shuttle, during its passage along the shuttle box, enough momen­ tum to carry it across the loom. Little that was new had appeared in the 1930's and 1940's and apart from Carver's machines little of what has been described seems to have reached industrial application. The post-war report of reparations investigators [79] makes no mention of electric jacquards being used in Germany. Evidently the advantages to be gained by electric control of the hooks were not, in spite of the opti­ mistic predictions of 1860, sufficient to outweight the cost, complexity, and, perhaps, doubtful reliability of most of the machines produced up to that time. This period of apparent stagnation makes a convenient point at which to end the present survey. Computers, which were to enhanve these ad­ vantages were just about to enter the scene, eventually to permit the

160 holding, editing and correcting, developing and synthesizing of weave programs. Also, jacquards and jacquard-like mechanisms were to be found in more diverse fields. There has always been an affinity be­ tween loom jacquards and controls of mechanical musical instruments that had then extended to statistical machines that used punched cards for data storage. Now jacquard-like mechanisms were to be used, oper­ ating at higher frequencies but with smaller amplitudes of movement, in paper tape and card readers, punches and copiers for use with computers. Thirdly, there is less reason to catalogue developments in more recent times because those same computers hold the data bases that permit the relevant patents and other literature to located relatively easily. I choose to end the survey close to home. Just before the end of this first century of the electric jacquard, when he was a student at Leeds Uni­ versity, Tibor Reich, the well known fabric designer patented a loom for pattern weaving [80]. The healds were to be controlled, in a way lit­ tle different from Bonelli's first loom, by electromagnets that were also to cause pattern cards to be cut and a weave diagram to be printed si­ multaneously. For the relatively slow operation envisaged no temporary program store was provided, instructions were to be fed directly to the electromagnets—being punched in at a keyboard!

13 Acknowledgement. This survey was made possible by the open access policy of the Patents Information Unit of Leeds City Library.

161 References

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162 18. Journal of the Society of Arts, London, February 17,1860. 19. G. Bonelli, BP 417 of 1860. 20. Journal of the Society of Arts, London, January 20,1860. . 21. Mechanics Magazine, March 25, 1854, 60, 272. 22. Verdol, EP 0,100,288,1984; Staubli-Verdol, EP 0,155,004,1985. 23. J. Szczepanik and L. Kleinberg, BP 8217 of 1896. 24. W. Zangerle and H. Fend, USP 3,265,096,1966. H. Fend and F.V. Nemethy, USP 3,499,473, 1970. 25. J. Griffiths (Bonas Machine Co.), BP 2,047,755, 1980. 26. J. Szczepanik and L. Kleinberg, BP 12,168 of 1896. 27. J. Szczepanik and L. Kleinberg, BP 12,111 and BP 14,288 of 1900. 28. J. Szczepanik and L. Kleinberg, BP 12,690 of 1896; J. Szczepanik and L. Kleinberg, BP 17,590, BP 19,380 of 1899; J. Szczepanik and L. Kleinberg, BP 8775 of 1900. 29. J. Szczepanik and L. Kleinberg, BP 16,825 of 1898. 30. Textile Manufacturer, 15 August, 1903, p. 271-273. 31. Annual Report to the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers, Ses­ sion 1899-1900, The Yorkshir College, Leeds, 1900. 32. A. Vogelsang, BP 18,787 of 1902. 33. E. Gates, BP 17,781 and BP 17,782 of 1896. 34. T.A.B. Carver, BP 14,345 of 1896. 35. T.A.B. Carver, BP 14,346 of 1896. 36. T.A.B. Carver, BP 20,469 of 1907.

163 37. Textile Manufacturer, XXXIII, 15 September, 1907, p. 301, Tex­ tile Recorder, XXV, September 14,1907, p. 141. 38. Textile Appliances Limited and T.A.B. Carver, BP 4312 of 1910. 39. A.P.S. Macquiston, BP 10,766 of 1901. 40. C. Handwerck, BP 25,749 of 1902. 41. F. Nasmith, Textile Recorder, 14 January, 1911, p. 332. 42. A. Regal, F. Harazin and E. Karsej, BP 10,065 of 1906 and BP 2829 of 1907. 43. A. Regal, BP 26,502 of 1909. 44. A. Regal, BP 10,363 of 1911; USP 983,862,1911. 45. (via A. Bloxam) Oesterreichische Siemens Schuckertwerk, Vi­ enna and Regal Patente Gesellschaft mbH, Vienna [OSS and RPG], BP 1046 of 1913. 46. OSS and RPG, BP 11,408 of 1914. 47. OSS and RPG, BP 11,410 of 1914. 48. OSS and RPG, BP 12,673 of 1914. 49. J. Kruger, BP 28,603 of 1907. 50. P. Matthijssen, BP 16,660 of 1909. 51. G. Corsi, BP 10,373 of 1913. 52. R.T. Carbonell, BP 15,226 of 1909. 53. A. Brunn, BP 2295 of 1913. 54. T. Woodhouse, "Jacquards and Harnesses"—a series of articles in Textile Manufacturer, commencing 38 15 January, 1912, p. 3 and continuing intermittently for almost ten years. 55. OSS and RPG, BP 156,995, 1921

164 56. A.S. Moore, Textile Recorder, 14 May, 1921, p. 54. 57. T.A.B. Carver, BP 206,963, 1923. 58. Verwaltungsgesellschaft der Werkzangmaschinen fabrik, Oerlikon, BP 1,051,854, 1963. 59. J. Spitz, S. Adler and L. Nettel, BP 174,846, 1922. 60. E.A. Butin and L. Girand, BP 238,203,1926. 61. Siemens and Halske Actiengesellschaft, BP 256,223,1926. 62. Carver Textile Patents and T.A.B. Carver, BP 257,737, 1926. 63. B. Bonnet, BP 1459 of 1855. 64. A. Johnsen and K. Rahbek, J. Inst. Electrical Eng. 61, 1923, p. 713. 65. E. Van Bree, BP 291,534, 1928. 66. D. Wieland (Sulzer Bros.), USP 3, 867,966, 1975. 67. C. Lorenz, Actiengesellschaft, BP 291,793, 1928. 68. G. Haebler, BP 318,972, 1931; USP 1,881,076, 1932. 69. R.E. Paris, BP 364,715, 1930. 70. E. Ribler, BP 1,264,702, 1968. 71. N. Jones, BP 465,654, 1937. 72. N. Jones, BP 469,309, 1939; BP 512,061, 1939. 73. W. Hamilton, USP 2,204,891, 1940. 74. G.C. Means, USP 1,904,06, 1933. 75. R. Stoehr, USP 2,136,328, 1938. 76. K. Nakeshini and K. Nakeshini, BP 417,387, #418,623, #427,357, #432,812, 1936.

165 77. W.S. Tandler and G. Fisher, USP 2,136,090, 1938; BP 494,618, #495,139, #497,106, #497,874, 1938; also W.S. Tandler and D. Walker, BP 512,977, 1939. 78. Electrotext Corporation, BP 711,955,1954. 79. Manufacture of jacquards and jacquard card punching equipment in Germany. British Intelligence Operation Subcommittee Final Report 1390 Item 31, HMSO, London. 80. T. Reich, BP 566,733, 1945.

166