His name has gone down in fashion history. He blew Napoleon’s mind and kick started a revolution. And if it weren’t for him, you might not be wearing any lacey lingerie whatsoever. But thanks to an unassuming 19th century silk weaver and serial small-scale entrepreneur from Lyon, the world is a better, sexier place.

According to different sources, Joseph-Marie Jacquard was a maker of printers’ type, straw hats, and cutlery. He was also a soldier in the revolutionary army, a bleacher, a lime burner and a book binder who dabbled in real estate. It wasn’t until his father died, leaving him with a vineyard, a quarry, and a number of looms, that Jacquard inadvertently turned his energy to an invention that would change the world of textiles forever.

Back in Jacquard’s day, weaving was a long, hugely laborious process done strictly by hand. In order to make intricate patterns of lace, a “drawboy” was needed. The drawboy literally sat inside a loom and lifted or moved threads around based on instructions from a master weaver. The amount of time it took to weave any significant piece of lace fabric nearly cancelled out any profits that came to the master weaver. Jacquard was hellbent on changing that.

Jacquard’s loom presaged the modern computer…

Jacquard worked on an invention that would automate this process. After a hiatus during the French Revolution, he finally completed his invention in 1801: a loom that could weave patterns based on a system of punch cards and hooks. This ingenious system was so revolutionary that Napoleon, who viewed Jacquard’s loom on a tour of Lyon in 1805, claimed it as public property, giving in exchange to Jacquard a small royalty and pension. (News flash: Napoleon was a lover and big consumer of silk from Lyon.)

The Jacquard loom completely upended the textile industry. For the first time ever, patterns could be stored on cards and used over and over again to manufacture the same product.  Many believe that the Jacquard loom is the distant precursor to computers and their algorithms, since the idea behind it was incorporated into the thinking and methodologies of future computer scientists. (On that note, Google’s recent plans to create conductive “smart” weaves for clothes were dubbed “Project Jacquard.”)

Joseph-Marie Jacquard was not the first to try to automate the weaving process. Basile Bouchon, Jean Falcon, and Jacques de Vaucanson all belong to a generation of 18th century French weavers and inventors who had a hand in furthering the technology. But complications with weights, cords, pulleys, and a host of snags kept their machines from achieving the same state of grace as Jacquard’s loom.

 A portrait of Jacquard woven in silk on a Jacquard loom (which required 24,000 punched cards to create in 1839), is currently in the collection of the Science Museum in London. In the meantime, every day there’s a little bit of Joseph-Marie Jacquard in – and on – all of us.