Jacques de Vaucanson

Jacques de Vaucanson (1709 to 1782) was a French inventor and artist, born in Grenoble, known for the first all metal lathe and for lifelike automata such as The Flute Player of 1737 and The Digesting Duck. His place in computing history is the automatic loom: appointed inspector of the silk manufacture in 1741, he created in 1745 what his source calls the world's first completely automated loom, drawing on the work of Basile Bouchon and Jean Baptiste Falcon and trying to automate the French textile industry with punch cards, the technology that Joseph Marie Jacquard refined more than half a century later. Weavers rejected his proposals and pelted him with stones. He became a member of the Académie des Sciences in 1746.