Joseph Marie Jacquard, the inventor of the loom which bears his name, and to whom the extent and prosperity of the silk manufacture of our time is mainly due, was born at Lyons in 1752, of humble parents, both of whom were weavers. His father taught him to ply the shuttle; but for education of any other sort, he was left to his own devices. He managed to pick up some knowledge of reading and writing for himself; but his favourite occupation was the construction of little models of houses, towers, articles of furniture, and so on, which he executed with much taste and accuracy. On being apprenticed to a type-founder, he exhibited his aptitude for mechanical contrivances by inventing a number of improved tools for the use of the workmen. On his father's death he set up as a manufacturer of figured fabrics; but although a skilful workman, he was a bad manager, and the end of the undertaking was, that he had to sell his looms to pay his debts. He married, but did not receive the dowry with his wife which he expected, and to support his family had to sell the house his father had left him,--the last remnant of his little heritage. The invention of numerous ingenious machines for weaving, type-founding, &c., proved the activity of his genius, but produced not a farthing for the maintenance of his wife and child. He took service with a lime-maker at Brest, while his wife made and sold straw hats in a little shop at Lyons. He solaced himself for the drudgery of his labours by spending his leisure in the study of machines for figure-weaving. The idea of the beautiful apparatus which he afterwards perfected began to dawn on him, but for the time it was driven out of his mind by the stirring transactions of the time. The whirlwind of the Revolution was sweeping through the land. Jacquard ardently embraced the cause of the people, took part in the gallant defence of Lyons in 1793, fled for his life on the reduction of the city, and with his son--a lad of sixteen--joined the army of the Rhine. His boy fell by his side on the field of battle, and Jacquard, destitute and broken-hearted, returned to Lyons. His house had been burned down; his wife was nowhere to be heard of. At length he discovered her in a miserable garret, earning a bare subsistence by plaiting straw. For want of other employment he shared her labours, till Lyons began to rise from its ruins, to recover its scattered population, and revive its industry. Jacquard applied himself with renewed energy to the completion of the machine of which he had, before the Revolution, conceived the idea; exhibited it at the National Exposition of the Products of Industry in 1801; and obtained a bronze medal and a ten years' patent.