3-011-444 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The International Exhibition: Swiss jacquard-loom for weaving ribbons - from a photograph by the London Stereoscopic Company, 1862. 'This machine...is employed in weaving eight broad silk ribbons at one time. The pattern of the ribbon is a continual repetition of the Royal arms of England, done in brilliant colours on a white silk ground...it appears a huge mass of delicate machinery, threads, perforated cards...&c...it is...eight single looms in one, and consequently its parts are eight times as numerous...there is a warp of blue and white silk, and a weft of white silk: these two make the plain ribbon upon which the pattern is wrought, but to produce which requires a large number of wefts of different colours, each requiring a separate shuttle, bobbin, &c. That these coloured wefts may be inserted at the right place the threads of the warp must be lifted in a great variety of ways; and to do this that immense mass of vertical white threads in the middle of the loom called the gears or healds becomes necessary. These are brought into action in sets at the necessary moment of time by means of the endless chain of perforated cards at the top of the machine, and which give to it the peculiar character known as the Jacquard principle'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.