Reviewed by wyvernfriend on
Lovelace would still have died of cancer tho.
Made me also think about how good enough is better than never done.
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 15 July, 2016: Finished reading
- 15 July, 2016: Reviewed
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage (Pantheon Graphic Library)
by Sydney Padua
Winner of the British Book Design and Production Award for Graphic Novels
Winner of the Neumann Prize in the History of Mathematics
In The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage Sydney Padua transforms one of the most compelling scientific collaborations into a hilarious set of adventures
Meet two of Victorian London's greatest geniuses... Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron: mathematician, gambler, and proto-programmer, whose writings contained the first ever appearance of general computing theory, a hundred years before an actual computer was built. And Charles Babbage, eccentric inventor of the Difference Engine, an enormous clockwork calculating machine that would have been the first computer, if he had ever finished it.
But what if things had been different? The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage presents a delightful alternate reality in which Lovelace and Babbage do build the Difference Engine and use it to create runaway economic models, battle the scourge of spelling errors, explore the wider realms of mathematics and, of course, fight crime - for the sake of both London and science. Extremely funny and utterly unusual, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage comes complete with historical curiosities, extensive footnotes and never-before-seen diagrams of Babbage's mechanical, steam-powered computer. And ray guns.
Lovelace would still have died of cancer tho.
Made me also think about how good enough is better than never done.