How an 1803 Jacquard Loom Led to Computer Technology [video] (youtube.com)

If you want a more in depth view about this series of events, I suggest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6yL0_sDnX0 which is an episode of the amazing documentary, Connections. (The show also has one of the best timed shots in history: https://youtu.be/cCJh5D0FCZk?t=119)

From "Calling your computer a Turing Machine is controversial" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37709009 :

> Turing was familiar with the Jacquard loom for weaving patterns on punch cards and Babbage's, and was then tasked with brute-forcing a classical cipher.

And before the Jacquard loom was the music box.

Music box > Timeline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_box#Timeline

Jacquard machine > Importance in computing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine#Importance_in...

Mechanical computer > Examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_computer#Examples :

> Antikythera: c. 100BC (a mechanical astronomical clock)

If you enjoyed this, I highly recommend Innovators by Walter Isaacson. It's a very deep and fascinating introduction to the history of computing.

Connections by James Burke talks about this, too.

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