The First Programming Language

Jacquard Loom Punch Cards, by Lars Olaussen

The first programs were written for a loom designed by Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752-1834).  The programs consisted of a series of holes punched into a card.  The machine reads each row of holes, corresponding to one row of thread in the design being woven, and uses the pattern to determine which hooks should be used for that row.  It's an ingenious system, and one that has been used for hundreds of years in the weaving industry.  Variations on these punched cards were used in early digital computers in the 20th century.

Punched cards such as these bear a close resemblance to what we today consider "machine code".  They are in essence a sequence of instructions in a language that can be directly executed by a machine.  They're not terribly easy for humans to understand.  Modern computer programming uses higher-level languages, which are then translated into machine code.  An example of a higher-level language is the Logo language I discussed earlier.

Wired Magazine has an interesting story on the Jacquard loom and its place in history.

Update: Here's a link to a BBC story I had been trying to find earlier about the lace industry in UK and their use  of Jacquard looms to this day.