What devices used computer-like programs in industrial era?
score:12
I believe the first "programmable" devices in common industrial use were the big industrial power looms in England in the late 18th and early 19th century. The Jacquard loom in 1801 was the first to use punched-cards for its programming.
Way over in Ukraine, Russian Semen Korasakov saw the potential of these cards for information storage and retrieval, and designed machines for this purpose in the early 1830s. Wikipedia claims that up to this time nobody was using the cards outside of the textile industry. Sadly, it appears that nobody outside of far eastern Europe heard of Karasakov's devices until the 20th century.
When mathemetician Ada Lovelace was helping Charles Babbage with his Analytical Engine design (the first known semi-practical programmable mechanical computing device design) in the 1830's, they borrowed the idea of programming it via punched-cards. Countess Lovelace went so far as to write down and publish an algorithm for it. Based on this, it is argued that she was the world's first computer programmer.
Jonathan Aylen says that steel mills were indeed using punched cards for programming before computers, and that the transition was so gradual that it is in fact hard to say exactly when computer steel mill control actually begain. So presumably the cards were eventually being used in mills other than just textile mills (eg: steel, lumber, paper) before computer controls were introduced. However, it appears that the idea of using them in computing devices is actually older than that.
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Source: stackoverflow.com
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