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The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage
by Sydney Padua
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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!…
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"The unusual story of this Victorian power-duo is what graphic artists and animator Sydney Padua explores in the immensely delightful and illuminating The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer ( public library ), itself a masterwork of combinatorial genius and a poetic analog to its subject matter — rigorously researched, it has approximately the same footnote-to-comic ratio as Lovelace’s trailblazing paper."
"With her look at the first computer, Sydney Padua transforms punch cards and little brass cogs into the stuff of legend. Her Victorian heroes are nothing if not memorable: The larger-than-life computational genius Charles Babbage, Padua writes, was a “blend of Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Toad, Don Quixote and Leonardo da Vinci.” The once-overlooked, eccentric math whiz Ada Lovelace smokes a pipe and scribbles equations. Padua’s exaggerated, loopy drawing style keeps the energy high. Her characters gasp and glower and grin; their hair ruffles in the steam."
"A graphic novel by Sydney Padua, "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage." This is an absolutely inspired creation: a cartoon story — "(Mostly) True" — about two real-life Victorian scientists who invented and described the first-ever computer. It's hilariously funny and alarmingly clever."