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

So impossibly funny, clever, demented, charming and altogether wonderful that I was a convert within three pages. Buy it for everyone you know, regardless of what you think they like. Brilliant stuff' Lucy Mangan,and Stylistand Books of the Year'An eye-opener... The more I think about this, the higher I esteem it' - Nicholas Lezard,and Guardianand Books of the Year*Winner of the British Book Design and Production Award for Graphic Novels**Winner of the Neumann Prize in the History of Mathematics**Nominated for the 2016 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album and Best Writer/Artist*Inand The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbageand Sydney Padua transforms one of the most compelling scientific collaborations into a hilarious set of adventuresMeet 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?and The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbageand 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,and The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbageand comes complete with historical curiosities, extensive footnotes and never-before-seen diagrams of Babbage's mechanical, steam-powered computer. And ray guns.