« The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage » Sydney Padua

book

Meet Victorian London’s most dynamic duo: Charles Babbage, the unrealized inventor of the computer, and his accomplice, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, the peculiar proto–programmer 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.

Details

Language English
Author Sydney Padua
Year Penguin, 2015
First Published 2015
ISBN 978-0-141-98151-2
Goodreads ID 22822839
Google Books ID rEz_jwEACAAJ
Open Library ID OL40425679M
Internet Archive ID thrillingadventu0000padu_a0v1

Information was most recently updated Mon May 11 18:09:52 2026