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🌊 Ripple · counterfactual

What if the Jacquard loom had gone differently?

1804 · france

Punched cards control a loom's pattern, the first program stored outside a human head.

If it had gone differently: The punched card is never invented; computing loses its oldest idea and its first physical form.

What it set up
  1. 1945The first electronic computers, Calculation stays the work of human "computers" with desk machines; the information age has no engine to run on.
  2. 1958The integrated circuit, Electronics stay built from discrete parts, wired by hand; the computer never leaves the air-conditioned room.
  3. 1977The personal computer, Computers stay institutional machines; there is no home computing, no software industry, no user base for a web.

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