Vanishing Culture: Punch Card Knitting

I recently bought an old Brother knitting machine (KH940) which is electronic but with a community of hackers adding third-party firmware and hardware on it [0]. There are also lots of models that read punch cards [1] and knit that purely mechanically (and later models electronically). They are a marvel of engineering that has essentially died out, only Silver Reed and Taitexma produce new models as far as I'm aware and they are often not as featureful as the old machines (SR has no garter carriages that Brother machines had 40 years ago for example).

[0]: http://www.ayab-knitting.com/ [1]: https://alessandrina.com/2015/09/03/brother-kms-punchcards-a...

My mom worked at a jeans factory in Switzerland, in the early 80s. Apparently they used some sort of punch cards to create certain patterns in the trousers (flowers and stuff like that).

Very interesting article, will ask her if they looked like those.