Meet Victorian London's most dynamic duo: Charles Babbage, the unrealized invent
or of the computer, and his accomplice, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, the peculiar
protoprogrammer and daughter of Lord Byron. When Lovelace translated a descripti
on of Babbage's plans for an enormous mechanical calculating machine in 1842, sh
e added annotations three times longer than the original work. Her footnotes con
tained the first appearance of the general computing theory, a hundred years bef
ore 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 rollickin
g alternate reality in which Lovelace and Babbage "do" build the Difference Engi
ne and then use it to build runaway economic models, battle the scourge of spell
ing errors, explore the wilder realms of mathematics, and, of course, fight crim
e--for the sake of both London and science. Complete with extensive footnotes th
at rival those penned by Lovelace herself, historical curiosities, and never-bef
ore-seen diagrams of Babbage's mechanical, steam-powered computer, "The Thrillin
g Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage "is wonderfully whimsical, utterly unusual,
and, above all, entirely irresistible.
