Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage

I read this a while ago, but yesterday was Ada Lovelace Day so I wanted to get it on my bookwyrm list. There have been a few treatments of the Countess of Lovelace (I like the one by Walter Isaacson), but this one is the most fun and the one that depicts her not just brilliant (her mom steered her into mathematics so she wouldn't be as nutty as her father Lord Byron, or maybe she was just spiting her ex, but anyone it's the first women in STEM program I've heard of) but also a bit of a wild thing. Like maybe the Joan Jett of programming. And yes, she was the first real programmer (Babbage built the thing, but Ada saw the real potential and expressiveness of code and actually wrote programs, and anyway Babbage never really built the thing).

A very entertaining graphic novel about how it might have been if Ada, Countess of Lovelace and Charles Babbage had managed to bring to life the Analytical Engine. The book starts with the real-life stories of Ada and Babbage, then branches off into a 'pocket universe' where the Analytical Engine is created and run by them.

In a series of adventures, the pair hilariously show off the Engine to Queen Victoria who wants to 'RULE THE WORLD!', called to save Britain from a global financial crisis, fight off the mathematical Luddites, try to mechanize fiction writing by statistically analysing a book by Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) and even try to visualize the third dimension (remember, the characters live on a two-dimensional page).

Probably one of the most hilarious short parts of the book is when George Boole (of Boolean logic fame) is reduces to mumbling "Error, error," when asked a non-boolean question (not a "Yes" or "No" answer) while being served a drink!

The book is full of footnotes by the author pointing out historical, mathematical, engineering and computing references to the situations depicted. Making the book more true to life is the effort the author went through to ensure that the words being said in the novel closely match what Ada, Babbage and other characters (like Isambard Kingdom Brunel) actually said or wrote in real life.

The book ends with a very technical appendix outlining how Babbage's Analytical Engine would have worked if it actually had been built.

A very entertaining read indeed.

This is a delightful book with mostly true facts about computing and history, even if the overall premise is a pocket universe were Lovelace and babbage team up to fight crime (for an idiosyncratic definition of 'crime').