Joseph-Marie Charles Jacquard (July 7, 1752 - August 7, 1834) was a French weaver and merchant. He played an important role in the development of the earliest programmable loom (the Jacquard loom), which in turn played an important role in the development of other programmable machines, such as computers. His surname was not technically Jacquard, it was Charles. In 1801, he exhibited his Jacquard loom invention at the industrial exhibition in Paris. His invention was fiercely opposed by the silk-weavers, who feared that its introduction, owing to the saving of labour, would deprive them of their livelihood, its advantages secured its general adoption, and by 1812 there were 11,000 Jacquard looms in use in France. The loom was declared public property in 1806, and he was rewarded with a pension and a royalty on each machine. The Jacquard Loom is a mechanical loom that has holes punched in pasteboard, each row of which corresponds to one row of the design. Multiple rows of holes are punched on each card and the many cards that compose the design of the textile are strung together in order. He died in 1834 at the age of 82.