Joseph Jacquard was a French weaver and merchant and the inventor of the Jacquard loom (completed 1801 and perfected by 1806). This device could weave complex patterns according to instructions coded on punched cards – a technique adopted by Charles Babbage for his calculator and used for computers into the 1980s. By 1812 there were 11,000 Jacquard looms in France. Modern looms are still based on Jacquard's principles.