Before the ones and zeros of modern computers, the Jacquard loom, invented in 1804 in Lyon, France, operated with a similar system in which a machine was fed coded instructions. The machine used punched cards to weave patterns, and it would do so through two possible inputs, either a punched hole or a blank space. It was capable of producing designs both efficiently and accurately. Prior to the Jacquard loom, complicated woven patterns required a great amount of time, precision and manual labor. It would take two men about a full workday to complete one inch of the intricate fabric patterns. Jacquard developed the loom in response to the demands of Lyon’s silk industry, which was the largest in the world at that time. This system demonstrated that information could be represented using simple symbols, as long as there were enough of them.