Vaucanson Loom

1745 · Perforated Cylinder Loom · Work 283 of 1,871

Vaucanson Loom, 1745, Perforated Cylinder Loom

Vaucanson's automated loom in a Lyon workshop, a perforated cylinder mounted above the harness turning to select warp threads.

What it was used for
Not a Lyon factory machine but a Paris workshop piece. Jacques de Vaucanson had been inspecteur général des manufactures de soie since 1741 and gathered at the hôtel de Mortagne a collection of models and machines, many of his own invention; that holding later became the Conservatoire. The task was to replace the tireur de lacs, the boy who pulled the pattern cords in weaving figured silk - the weaver was to do no more than turn a crank with one hand. The loom entered the collection in 1783. The museum judges it itself: "la nouveauté, trop radicale, provoqua l'hostilité des ouvriers. Cette machine ne connut pas d'application industrielle." Condorcet reported in his Éloge of 1782 that workers in Lyon had pursued Vaucanson with stones on a journey there "parce qu'ils avoient ouï dire" that he was seeking to simplify the looms - with no year given, and with that reservation.
What was new
The predecessors are named: in 1725 Bouchon pressed a band of pierced paper against a row of needles; in 1728 Falcon replaced it with a chain of cards on a square prism. Vaucanson's step was to suppress the heavy tail-cards altogether and lay the pierced paper on a large pierced cylinder that travelled back and forth at each stroke and turned a little by ratchet work; to this he added the rising and falling griffe. From that the Rev. R. Willis concluded in 1855 that Jacquard's merit was not that of an inventor but of an experienced workman who combined the best parts of his predecessors' machines. The dating is open: the object page of the Musée des Arts et Métiers gives 1746, its own press pack "vers 1751", the literature 1745. And Vaucanson still passed the shuttle by levers although Kay's fly shuttle had been patented in England in 1733 - Barlow: had he adopted it, the power loom would probably have come half a century earlier.

Further reading