Your museum audio guide,live this week.

In front of you is the mill's Jacquard loom. Look up to the frame above the warp threads — that loop of punched cards is the pattern, about two thousand one hundred of them, sewn end to end. Just underneath the cards there's a row of hooks. As each card passes, a hook goes up wherever there's a hole in it, and that hook lifts a single warp thread. Where the card is solid, the thread stays down. So the weaver isn't following a design. He works the pedals and throws the shuttle across — one pass of the shuttle for every card that turns.