The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer

by Sydney Padua
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer

by Sydney Padua

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Overview

A debut graphic biography that transforms one of the most compelling scientific collaborations into a hilarious series of adventures.

Meet Victorian London’s most dynamic duo: Charles Babbage, the unrealized inventor of the computer, and his accomplice, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, the peculiar protoprogrammer and daughter of Lord Byron. When Lovelace translated a description of Babbage’s plans for an enormous mechanical calculating machine in 1842, she added annotations three times longer than the original work. Her footnotes contained the first appearance of the general computing theory, a hundred years before an actual computer was built. Sadly, Lovelace died of cancer a decade after publishing the paper, and Babbage never built any of his machines.

But do not despair! The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage presents a rollicking alternate reality in which Lovelace and Babbage do build the Difference Engine and then use it to build runaway economic models, battle the scourge of spelling errors, explore the wilder realms of mathematics, and, of course, fight crime—for the sake of both London and science. Complete with extensive footnotes that rival those penned by Lovelace herself, historical curiosities, and never-before-seen diagrams of Babbage’s mechanical, steam-powered computer, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is wonderfully whimsical, utterly unusual, and, above all, entirely irresistible.

With black-and-white illustrations throughout.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780307908285
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date: 04/21/2015
Series: Pantheon Graphic Library
Sold by: Random House
Format: eBook
Pages: 320
Sales rank: 267,166
Lexile: 1130L (what's this?)
File size: 162 MB
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About the Author

SYDNEY PADUA is an animator and visual effects artist, usually employed in making giant monsters appear to be attacking people for the movies. She started drawing comics by accident and is still trying to figure out how to stop. Originally from the Canadian prairie, she now lives in London with her husband and far too many books. The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is her first book.

Table of Contents

Ada Lovelace: The Secret Origin! 11

The Pocket Universe 40

The Person from Porlock 45

Lovelace & Babbage vs. the Client! 50

Primary Sources 91

Lovelace and Babbage vs. the Economic Model! 95

Luddites! 140

User Experience! 147

Mr. Boole Comes to Tea 208

Imaginary Quantities 215

Appendix I Some Amusing Primary Documents 259

Appendix II The Analytical Engine 285

Epilogue 311

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