The Jacquard Loom is the first machine to use punch cards to instruct a machine. Punch cards are now used in other textile machines to create complicated patterning. Herman Hollerith used the idea of punch cards to not only store information, but to input information into a computing device, helping to create IBM. Charles Babbage designed his analytical engine, the precursor to digital computers, after observing the mechanical operations of the Jacquard loom.

Although men are those who created the machines, it was the women who were using them. Women were using looms and were also the first human computers. There is a clear relationship in the act of all fiber arts, whether it is the over/under of weaving or the knit/purl of knitting. Modern knitting machines with punch cards are widely used by women and still reflect the tedious actions of binary coding. Nicknamed Little Old Lady Memory, programs were physically woven into core memory systems for early computers.