The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer: 02/12/17

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer by Sydney Padua is a graphic novel that explores the lives of Ada, Countess of Lovelace and Charles Babbage and then extrapolates an alternate, steampunk timeline based on their work on the difference machine.

The first chapter or adventure or issue, if you want to treat it like a compilation of comic books, is a straight up biography of Lovelace and Babbage. It's still humorous but it's far cry from the tangential exercises and general mayhem that follows.

Maybe it's just me, but the way Lovelace and Babbage are drawn remind me of Mary Shelley and Victor Frankenstein. Babbage, especially later on, is show in the same sort of double breasted lab coat that Dr. Frankenstein wears.

In the later adventures — the pocket dimension of what if — the two team up and receive a huge grant from Queen Victoria. In the name of crime fighting and betting on ponies, they build a warehouse sized difference machine. It's so large that one can easily get lost inside. It's probably a steam driven TARDIS.

The book is both educational and riotously funny.

Five stars

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