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Sydney Padua

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer (Pantheon Graphic Library) Hardcover – Illustrated, April 21, 2015

by Sydney Padua (Author)

(4.6) 492 ratings

Part of: Pantheon Graphic Library

Goodreads Choice Award nominee

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THE THRILLING ADVENTURES OF LOVELACE AND BABBAGE . . . in which Sydney Padua 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.)

Part of series

Pantheon Graphic Library
Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Pantheon
Publication date

April 21, 2015
Dimensions

7.42 x 1.18 x 10.28 inches
ISBN-10

0274811537
ISBN-13

978-0274811533
Lexile measure

1130L
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Editorial Reviews

Review

James Gleick, author of The Information
“Don’t be fooled by the word ‘comic.’ Sydney Padua tells a story that is tender, passionate, and true.”

Charles Petzold, author of Code and The Annotated Turing
"So there. The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is learned, clever, funny, and above all very silly in the best sense of the word."

Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The immensity of Padua’s research and the wit and allusions of her prose are striking, saying as much about what drove her to explore the possibilities of her protagonists’ relationship as about the protagonists themselves. Permeated by delightful illustrations, obsessive foot- and endnotes, and a spirit of genuine inventiveness, it’s an early candidate for the year’s best.”

Martha Cornog, Library Journal
“Padua’s extravaganza is very much for the whimsical intelligentsia and will speak to those interested in computers or math who will delight in the abundant background materials.”

Bookpage
“Sydney Padua’s impeccably researched, yet playfully imagined graphic biography is a treat for history buffs and graphic novel lovers alike…With fantastically detailed art, footnotes and diagrams…, this is a whimsical graphic account like no other.”

Margaret Quamme, The Columbus Dispatch
“Reading The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is like auditing a dozen high-level, inventively taught college classes simultaneously: more than a little overwhelming yet fascinating.”

Etelka Lehoczky, NPR.org
“Sydney Padua’s new book is definitely ‘Yowza!’ material.”

Discover Magazine
“An outlandish, enlightening tale.”

Nancy Szokan, Washington Post
“Informative and entertaining . . . . It’s a book that makes you a lot smarter as it makes you laugh.”

The Takeaway
“Novelist Sydney Padua has found quite a pair: the girl with the unstoppable brain; the male inventor 24 years her senior, part-poet, part-genius; this Victorian odd couple, dedicated to crime foiling and cleverness, is easily worthy of Holmes and Watson with a title to match.”

Maria Popova, BrainPickings.org
“Immensely delightful and illuminating …a masterwork of combinatorial genius and a poetic analog to its subject matter.”

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.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0307908275
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pantheon; Illustrated edition (April 21, 2015)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0274811537
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0274811533
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1130L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.83 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.42 x 1.18 x 10.28 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #318,467 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #356 in Historical & Biographical Fiction Graphic Novels
- #418 in Literary Graphic Novels (Books)
- #962 in Biographical Historical Fiction

Customer Reviews:
(4.6) 492 ratings

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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5

492 global ratings

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Virtualrealist

Fun history

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 26, 2021

Verified Purchase

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer is a graphic novel by Sydney Padua. My only complaint about this was I couldn't adjust the font size on my Kindle, so the footnotes were very difficult to read. The rest of this is so much fun.

I knew nothing about Charles Babbage, but I had heard hints about Ada Lovelace's involvement in creating the first computer. That she was Lord Byron's daughter makes her all the more fascinating because he is an unusual character. She took her passion in a very different direction but with no less fervor. While this graphic novel takes liberties with the history, Sydney Padua is very upfront about what is true and what might be embellishment via footnotes throughout. A very fun way to explore history!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 3, 2016

Verified Purchase

Do not even think, just BUY THIS BOOK! This is one of the most enjoyable graphic novels, one of the best "popular" books on the history of science, and one of the great Victorian narratives EVER. PERIOD. The author navigates a complex and contentious set of topics with aplomb and unfailingly upbeat good humor -- except when describing lingering and painful deaths by cancer and other unpleasant eventualities. Babbage and Lovelace, two of history's real one-of-a-kinds (one the sole legitimate offspring of the notorious and unfettered poetic genius, Lord Byron; the other the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge -- think Newton and Hawking) are here morphed into a pair of ur-Steampunk mathematical geniuses and erstwhile crime fighters, as if their real-life lives and friendship at [the imaginary] ground zero of the digital age were not excitement enough. In working her way through their perilous escapades, Padua (who is way smarter than she lets on in the footnotes) provides a brilliant exegesis of some of the 19th century's most difficult mathematical and philosophical terrain, all without breaking a sweat. A brilliant performance, and hopefully one to be repeated.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Arvella B. Oliver

A Necessary Volume for all fans of Steampunk, Lovelace, Maths, Alternate Universes, Invention, Adventure, Comics, Engineering...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 22, 2015

Verified Purchase

The inimitable, indomitable Ms. Padua has given us all a great gift in the form of this most excellent treatise on computing and crimefighting! I became a great admirer of Ms. Padua upon the instant of discovering her astounding comic on the web, and doubted that this 3d version of that Accomplishment could be in any way superior; but the evidence in my hands this fine day has proven me wrong! I must beg the Authoress' pardon for my lack of faith, and share with all Learned men and women the news of this Necessary volume...

(Ahem.) There's more comic, more story, more art, and Even. More. Footnotes. in the 3d version of 2d goggles. Yes! More Footnotes! If you love the webcomic, then you really do need to get your hands on the paper book. If you haven't read the webcomic - well, get thee to 2dgoggles! A quick perusal of the art and imagination there will convince you to add this to your RWL (real world library) at once! Join the Lovelace Association today!

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Views from Annapolis

It's an innovative and entertaining approach that gives a lot of good historical information along with an interesting portrait of the ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 4, 2017

Verified Purchase

This book is essentially two parallel threads; one an entertaining and fanciful alternative history concoction; the other a true and well informed historical portrayal of Lovelace and Babbage. It's an innovative and entertaining approach that gives a lot of good historical information along with an interesting portrait of the two personalities.What I found really useful, and I don't think you'll find elsewhere, is Ms. Padua's work on putting all the pieces together to present what the actual completed machine might have looked like.
Some years ago a read a standard biography of Babbage. If you're really interested in a complete picture of Babbage, I would not say that "The Thrilling Adventures...." is a substitute for that, but it is a very useful adjunct to it. It does give a better feel for who these people actually were, and a much better emphasis on Ada Lovelace.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

SarahLawrence Scott

Much More Than Whimsy

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 31, 2016

Verified Purchase

Delightful! And much more to it than I expected.

Padua begins with the historical version of Babbage and Lovelace, and then goes beyond that to have them engage in a series of disconnected Victorian adventures, often interacting with other famous personages of the times. But what really makes the book work are the footnotes, which act as a kind of running commentary on the graphic novel elements, and the endnotes to each chapter, which provide a little more meat and some miscellaneous facts that don't fit elsewhere. No matter how fantastic the story, Padua keeps connecting her dialogue and actions to things that the historical Lovelace and Babbage and their compatriots said or did, in a way that makes it clear that the actual people were fully as remarkable as the swashbuckling cartoon characters they have inspired.

As a bonus, the end of the book includes some curated excerpts from letters and articles that Padua used for her research.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

R. Whitehead

Fun for nerds!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 24, 2023

Verified Purchase

Initially I found the footnotes and endnotes a distraction from the story. Then I realised they were the real story, and the graphic novel is just a frill on top!
Aspects of the real story are so crazy that it hardly needs the fantasy. This book makes that history easy to read, since it has been edited to be very brief and only include the amusing bits.
The book ends with a big diagram showing how Babbage's analytic engine would have worked. In our electronic age it's hard to imagine numbers being stored on cogs and copied from one place to another by toothed rods.

Tielhard

At a loss how to describe this wonderful comic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 24, 2020

Verified Purchase

This may be the most enjoyable comic I have read for a very very long time. I am just not sure how to describe it. It is definitely an historical investigation of Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace and the calculating engines Babbage concieved and Lovelace was inspired by to almost glimpse the potential of computing. It is a slapstick journey across a steam punk London that never was. It is also a popular science explanation of the unfullfilled dream of mechanical computation. On top of that there are some wonderfully silly vignettes of the mathematical and literary Victorians at thier most eccentric. Then of course there is Brunel as he never was but everyone thinks he was. The drawings of both the main characters, Lovelace and Babbage are charming and engaging but the best characters by far are Brunel, Eliott, Babbage's footman and Wellington's horse. Unless you are an organ grinder's monkey or a poet you should love this comic.

One person found this helpful

Susan Stepney

have thrilling adventures and fight crime

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 16, 2016

Verified Purchase

The tale of a Pocket Universe in which Lovelace and Babbage live to complete the Analytical Engine, and use it to have thrilling adventures and fight crime (the crimes of street music and poetry, that is).

This starts off as a relatively straightforward account of Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, and the never-to-be-completed Analytical Engine, the famous programmable mechanical computer, told in lovely graphic novel format. But that real life story ends unhappily, and too soon (Lovelace died at the age of 36, and Babbage never completed his masterpiece).

Rather than the book stopping at page 40, the fictional story begins, in an alternate universe, where the laws of time are a little more fluid, the engine is completed, and the super-geniuses Babbage and Lovelace, agents of The Crown, team up to fight crime, meet Wellington and Brunel, banter about computers, and have thrilling steampunk adventures, all gloriously illustrated, and copiously footnoted.

Those footnotes are there to point out the links (sometimes tenuous, often not) between what is happening in the tales, and what happened in reality. There is a lot of research behind these brief tales, with some footnotes having endnotes of their own, with more copious material; and some of those endnotes have further footnotes of their own. These tell of the (real life) events behind the (sadly so very fictional) scenes being illustrated.

Sometimes a page of research is captured by a quick joke, or a single panel. But one whole story depends on it: the visitor who distracts Coleridge when writing Kubla Khan is none other than that destroyer of poetry, Lovelace herself! The evidence is convincingly presented; only one tiny detail argues against it, scrupulously recorded by the author: “Some may object that she was born eighteen years after the composition of the poem, but this anomaly is easily explained”.

Overall, this is a delight, especially if you are interested in the Analytical Engine, and the history behind it. The individual stories probably do not stand on their own, but when supported by triply-nested footnotes, and superb illustrations, everything comes together brilliantly.

2 people found this helpful

Kevin Trebell

Lovely and well presented vision of what might have been with two of the great minds of their age

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 26, 2015

Verified Purchase

I ordered this having seen some great reviews (and being reminded of it whilst watch a recent documentary on Ada).

I've known about Ada for many years and her huge importance in the formation of my industry alongside Babbage as this was my area of study (in fact one of the languages I learned to code in was named after her).

This book is a little different though, starting with the history of Ada and Babbage and their relationship but moving in to a fictional world where Ada did not die young and their adventures continued. It's wonderful in the way it visualises what might have been had these two brilliant minds finished their work.

The book is presented nicely, the cartoon artwork is lovely and the copious footnotes add a lot of depth to the book. It has also has a nice steampunk vibe to it, seeing the inventions of these two realised in a Victorian world.

Overall I love this and reckon it's a great read for those who want to learn a bit more about them or who just want a fun read.

One person found this helpful

J. Shanks

Loved it!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 22, 2016

Verified Purchase

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is an odd hybrid of a book. It quite happily mixes fact and fiction with liberal smatterings of "celebrities" of the day (Queen Victoria, Brunel, Marian "George Eliot" Evans, Charles "Lewis Carroll" Dodgson, Wellington, Dickens, etc.). There are lots of lengthy footnotes, endnotes and a few other pages of text which may be off-putting to to some graphic novel/comic book readers, but the cartoon elements may likewise deter "serious" readers. However, neither party should be put off as, whilst there are extensive notes, which impart a lot of facts, they are in-keeping with the humour of the comic strips and everything is lovingly joined together by Sydney Padua who has clearly enjoyed her research and has a genuine affection for her lead protagonists. The art is quite lovely and the writing is to a high standard. Even the binding is praiseworthy! No prior knowledge of the subject matter is required to enjoy this rip-roaring romp where you can even have fun learning along the way!

One person found this helpful

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