You probably wouldn't be logging on to your Computer today if it weren't for a weaving machine invented about 200 years ago.

In the early 1800s, a Frenchman, Joseph Marie Jacquard, invented a weaving loom that used holes punched in cards to control the pattern.

About 30 years later a mathematician, Ada Byron,

wrote the first computer programs.

She based them on Jacquard's punch-card idea.

Her programs were for the first general - purpose mechanical digital computer, which had just been invented by Charles Babbage.

***

About 60 years later, an American, Herman Hollerith, built on these three people's ideas.
He invented a machine that used punch cards to electrically count the information collected in the 1890 census. He was so successful that he started a company, later called IBM.