> Punchcards are also mechanically configured, not symbolically programmed.

I don’t know that I said the punchcards are programmable.

It is the machine that is programmable via the punchcards.

By these criteria printing press was much more programmable than the loom. The Babbage's machine was not notable for being "symbolically programmable", it was a machine capable of universal computation. That is huge step beyond any complex programmable automata such as were made for clocks and music boxes.

The "It had no conditional logic or flow control. No stored symbolic instructions." you mention applies to the loom too. It copied what was poked into cards to different medium, not unlike Gutenberg's press did.

I'm obviously missing the big differentiator of Jacquard's loom, but so far I have not seen it clearly explained in the articles I've read.

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kevin_thibedeau 5 hours ago | parent [-]

The loom allowed for interchangeable weaving sequences to be saved on a cheap medium for later reuse. Movable type presses didn't make that practical with the cost of fonts.

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112233 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Here is a 1746 machine loom that used perforated tape, half a century before Jacquard:

https://www.arts-et-metiers.net/musee/metier-tisser-les-etof...

Nor is it first such device. Here is the nice image of barrel with pins that controls the 14th century machine organ:

https://www.pianola.org/history/history_mechanical.cfm

Again, while impact of Jacquard's loom was indisputably huge, ascribing origin of computers to it seems like calling Ford model T the origin of personal transportation.

	▲	ajb 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Wikipedia suggests that the Jacquard loom introduced Babbage to punched cards, which would be why it, rather than the others, is associated with the origin of computers.