The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer by Sydney Padua, 315 pages

The Thrilling Adventures... is an entertaining mish-mash of comics, history, alternate-history, computers, math, Alice in Wonderland, steam-punk, Victorian England and postmodern self-referential meta-footnotes.  I had to use three bookmarks to keep my place in the main text, endnotes and appendices (and I still got a bit confused on occasion).   But overall, it's an outstanding introduction to Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace's (almost) creation of the first computer and computer programs, though most of the book is set in a pocket universe and imagines a history that never actually came to be.

Padua grapples a bit with the question of who was Ada Lovelace?  Supergenius mathematical prodigy and co-inventor of the computer, or an empty symbol for politically correct feminists?  While this question is never definitively answered (the primary sources regarding Ada are sadly slim when compared to her male contemporaries), Padua does make a strong argument for a Lady Lovelace who tends toward the former description instead of the latter.  I have to admit to getting lost in some of the math and engineering discussions periodically, but Padua's humor and wonderful drawings helped pull me along through these technical sections.  I also loved the frequent guest appearances by Lovelace and Babbage's Victorian buddies including Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, Charles Dickens and Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll).

Recommended for those who enjoy Kate Beaton's comics, those interested in steam powered computers, lovers of enormous rambling footnotes and Ada Lovelace groupies.