biography
| name: |
Vaucanson, Jacques de
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pronunciation:
[vohkãsõ]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1709–82)
|
| biography:
| Engineer and inventor, born in Grenoble, E France. He went to Paris to study mechanics, and became adept at constructing automata such as a duck which swam, quacked, flapped its wings, and swallowed its food, developing for this delicate work machine tools of lasting importance. Appointed an inspector of silk factories (1741), he devised various improvements to the machines for weaving and dressing the silk, and succeeded in making the first fully automatic loom (1745), controlled through a system of perforated cards. It was cumbersome and not wholly reliable, however, and it was not until the turn of the century, when it was further improved by Jacquard, that it came into widespread use. |
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