Even so, with its generations of skilled weavers, by the mid-1800s, France was known around the world for the quality of its woven silks.
As ever-larger mechanized looms replaced skilled hand weavers in the 1790s, an explosion of woven goods appeared in European and American trade markets. These goods were inexpensive due to being mass-produced. However, these new, mechanized looms could not compete with the skilled manual labor required to create fabrics containing anything other than a plain or simple, woven pattern, such as a check or stripe.
It would be the invention of a Frenchman named Joseph Marie Jacquard that would spread mass production to these more complicated, and costly, textile designs, allowing even intricate patterns to be automatically woven into the cloth at much the same rate as a plain length of fabric could be generated.
Son of a Silk Weaver
Born July 7, 1752, in the southern French city of Lyon, Jacquard spent much of his life in the silk textile industry. Like his parents had before him, young Joseph went to work at a silk mill in Lyon. Along with many young boys of his generation and economic status, he grew up working 10-hour days within the factory.
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