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Updated: June 13, 2025
The first use Jacquard made of his new loom was to weave with it several yards of rich stuff which he presented to the Empress Josephine. Napoleon was highly gratified with the result of the inventor's labours, and ordered a number of the looms to be constructed by the best workmen, after Jacquard's model, and presented to him; after which he returned to Lyons.
The system of this branch of the trades-union kept trained workmen comparatively scarce, and enabled them to command regular and even advanced prices at periods when other trades were depressed. The older hands looked upon a fresh apprentice in the yard with much the same favor as workingmen of the era of Jacquard looked upon the introduction of a new piece of machinery.
The inventor was forthwith summoned to Paris with his machine, and brought into the presence of the Emperor, who received him with the consideration due to his genius. The interview lasted two hours, during which Jacquard, placed at his ease by the Emperor's affability, explained to him the improvements which he proposed to make in the looms for weaving figured goods.
Such work as this used to require a vast amount of skill and patience; but the famous Jacquard machine will do it with ease, and will do more complicated weaving than any one ever dreamed of before its invention, for it will weave not only regular figures extending across the cloth, but can be made to introduce clusters of flowers, a figure, or a face wherever it is desired.
The city was taken; Jacquard fled and joined the Army of the Rhine, where he rose to the rank of sergeant. He might have remained a soldier, but that, his only son having been shot dead at his side, he deserted and returned to Lyons to recover his wife. He found her in a garret still employed at her old trade of straw-bonnet making.
At length, carried away by the popular impulse, the prud'hommes, most of whom had been workmen and sympathized with the class, had one of Jacquard's looms carried off and publicly broken in pieces. Riots followed, in one of which Jacquard was dragged along the quay by an infuriated mob intending to drown him, but he was rescued.
The great value of the Jacquard loom, however, could not be denied, and its success was only a question of time. Jacquard was urged by some English silk manufacturers to pass over into England and settle there. But notwithstanding the harsh and cruel treatment he had received at the hands of his townspeople, his patriotism was too strong to permit him to accept their offer.
In 1830 there were not 100 Jacquard looms in Manchester and its neighbourhood, whilst at the present time there are probably 12,000 employed either on silk or some branch of figure weaving. The most convenient silk manufactory for the visit of the stranger is that of Messrs. James Houldsworth of Portland Street, near the Royal Infirmary.
They were too poor to give him any but the most meagre education. When he was of age to learn a trade, his father placed him with a book-binder. An old clerk, who made up the master's accounts, gave Jacquard some lessons in mathematics.
The loom was exhibited at the Exposition of National Industry at Paris in 1801, and obtained a bronze medal. Jacquard was further honoured by a visit at Lyons from the Minister Carnot, who desired to congratulate him in person on the success of his invention.
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