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

Whimsical, educational, and yes, even thrilling. Padua's graphic novel eloquently and humorously tells the story of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace -- both the real timeline, in which the brilliant but temperamental inventors never realize their visions, and an imaginary one in which they actually build a ginormous steam-powered computer. The research is meticulous (there are tons of excerpts from the main characters' papers, as well as various diagrams that I wish I understood better), and the illustrations are just fantastic. I'm looking forward to sequels -- and, once Padua recovers from publishing this, more webcomics!

The book spawned by the webcomic 2dgoggles. It probably qualifies as a comic book, but between the copious footnotes, endnotes, and primary source documents that doesn’t seem entirely correct.

I actually didn’t read this book for a long time after buying it, as I thought it would simply print parts of the webcomic. Much to my surprise, the parts of the comic which had already appeared online were expanded and improved upon! Generally, when such a thing happens it is a letdown for someone who has read the original, but though a bit of the brisk comedy of the first form was gone, I really like the new versions. We learn so much more, and it is still absolutely in Padua’s brilliant style.

I highly suggest this book for anyone who show more wants to know a bit about Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage, the Difference Engine, the Analytical Engine, or Victorian-era political cartoons. If you like steampunk this should be required reading – yes the fiction of Verne is important, but a bit of grounding in the crazy science fact of the day is not to be overlooked. But even if none of that is particularly interesting, the book is educational, funny, frequently laugh-out-loud-in-a-restaurant funny, and yet at times deeply bittersweet. It is a wonderfully worthwhile read.

I’m glad the website is still up, because there are several wonderful vignettes that didn’t make it into the book, but I am extremely happy to have this hard copy, and may just give copies to people I like.

Dear Sydney Padua, thank you for teaching me about Isambard Kingdom Brunel. show less

An imaginary comic about an imaginary computer, with a pair of heroes granted imaginary lives by the simple application of a pocket alternative universe thing. This plays giddy games with history and technology, science and biography, philosophy and literature and it has footnotes, so so many footnotes, a veritable footnote bubble ready to collapse into a terrifying footnote crisis that will lead to scholars who invested too heavily on footnote futures leaping off asterisks and bruising their ibids. Fortunately, the footnotes are witty, wise and full of amusing and fascinating historical trivia while the comics themselves are a warmhearted delight of unabashed silly cleverness. Long live Lovelace and Babbage!

Charles Babbage was a Victorian inventor who came up with very, very detailed plans for what he called the Analytical Engine: a calculating machine that really would have been nothing more or less than a computer -- a primitive, limited, and clunky computer, but a full-fledged computer nonetheless -- made out of cogwheels and powered by steam. Which is an idea that, I think, just gets cooler and weirder the more you think about it. Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace was the only legitimate daughter of Lord Byron, a woman whose impressive intellect was deliberately channeled into mathematics by her mother in hopes that she wouldn't end up like her crazy poet father. She and Babbage hit it off wonderfully and formed a firm friendship and show more long-term collaboration on matters concerning the Analytical Engine. Where Babbage was focused on the mechanics of the device, Lovelace was more interested in its operation, and had some genuinely prophetic ideas about what machines like it might be capable of. She is sometimes described as being the first computer programmer.

They were also, apparently, really fascinating, eccentric, and colorful characters who make great material for a graphic novel. Although I'm not actually sure whether "graphic novel" is quite the right word for this book. It's a mixture of fiction and non-fiction, with, as the subtitle suggests, rather more of the latter than the former. Actually, its origin story is rather charming. The author initially just created a humorous little biography of Ada Lovelace in webcomic form. But she found the end of that story a little too depressing for the light tone of the comic: Lovelace, sadly, died young, and Babbage died frustrated and unfulfilled, having never succeeded in actually constructing his Engine. So Padua instead concluded her comic by imagining a "pocket universe" in which they were able to build the thing, after all, and use it to "have thrilling adventures and fight crime." The comic turned out to be quite popular, which was nice, but also led to people assuming she was now writing a comic about the alternate-universe adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, when really she was just making a throwaway joke. She kept insisting to people that no, she wasn't writing anything of the kind, even as she kept finding herself, well, sort of writing it. This book is the result!

I actually do think the Lovelace bio that starts it out is the best part. It's hilarious, informative, geeky, and delightful. The fictionalized adventures that follow are sometimes whimsical -- one of them features an Alice-in-Wonderland version of Lovelace falling through a looking-glass into the Engine itself -- but are mostly just little excuses to bring in other famous people of the time, many of whom were personally known to Babbage and Lovelace, often taking their dialog directly from their written works or letters, and providing lots and lots of factual footnotes. Which sounds a bit dry, and the footnotes do get a little out of hand in the first adventure -- something the author notices and ends up making a meta-joke about -- but overall it actually works surprisingly well. The humor is always cute and fun, the historical facts are genuinely interesting, and Padua is clearly so fond of these two nutty geniuses and enthused by her own research into them that it's truly infectious.

She also includes interesting quotes from some primary sources she's found at the end, as well as a section showing her own drawings of the Analytical Engine and taking us through its workings. (Well, in a simplified fashion, anyway, because it's all very dauntingly complex.)

Recommended for anyone who's interested in Lovelace and Babbage, the history of computer science, the Victorian era in general, or a bit of pleasantly nerdy humor. show less

Utterly charming. Babbage was bonkers and Lovelace was lively. With special guest appearances by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Charles Dodgson and others this is a delightful tale, winningly presented.

I am an English major turned historian turned web developer (and let's not forget feminist), and if you designed a book specifically to appeal to all of my geekinesses, you couldn't do much better than this.

First of all, it has Ada Lovelace, who is a fascinating person: the daughter of Lord Byron, whose mother didn't want her to be a poet and thus subjected her to a lot of math lessons, turning her into a mathematical prodigy who was able to foresee the potential of computing. Then there's Babbage, who is also pretty darn fascinating, not only for inventing a computer but also for being a classic British curmudgeon. Then, it sticks them in an alternate universe where Babbage has built his Analytical Engine. Since it's an alternate show more universe, Padua can make things happen just because it would have been cool if they had happened that way. A lesser author would just make a bunch of stuff up, but Padua recognizes that reality was almost the coolest thing ever, so she makes some very slight tweaks to reality (some episodes are almost entirely drawn from reality, and some episodes are more fantastical).

But what really made the academic historian in me squee was the research! Most of the dialog is quoted directly from primary sources. The book is full of other historical and literary figures such as Brunel, George Sand, Charles Dickens, and of course Queen Victoria. The comics not only have footnotes, but also endnotes AND appendices! Padua has done her research well, and clearly knows when she's being historical and when she is imagining alternate realities. The whole book is a labor of love and fascination, and as a reader, it is impossible not to share in that love and fascination.

This was fun to read, but now I'm looking forward to re-reading it. show less

It starts off as an actual biography, discussing Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (hereafter Ada Lovelace as is common usage) and her life. How the fear of her becoming like her father Lord Byron she is raised quite strictly and finds an outlet in Mathematics, at which she becomes exceedingly proficient. Sydney Padua also introduces us to Charles Babbage. Babbage had an idea that never (well not until it was made in 2002 http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/ ) became real, what we now recognise as the first computer and Ada Lovelace came up with ideas that would have been programs. Sadly these never became real and Ada Lovelace died of cancer. This is a entertaining foray into might-have-beens and footnotes and images and explanations show more of the workings of the computer - which if I'm honest left me cold, I'm more a user than a builder, but I'll tweak my user experience as much as I can.

Entertaining, you can tell that Sydney Padua was caught up by the story and the people and her genuine liking for them shows. The footnotes and endnotes are hilarious and I think this may be the first graphic novel I've read with this amount of footnotes and endnotes.

Recommended. show less