I’m working on Part 2 of Lovelace and Babbage vs the economy but I had to draw this for some reason:

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was like the Wolverine of the early Victorians.  He was short, ripped, had big sideburns, smoked 50 cigars a day, AND KICKED EVERYONE’S ASS!!

Okay, I don’t know for a fact that he was ripped.  It’s hard to tell:

I’m struggling with the unforgiving black-and-white—- pretty much all the drawing I’ve done, I noodle happily with a soft blue pencil and then leave it that (or some poor sap had to clean it up). I think it reads better on screen than half-tones though; plus it’s good discipline; plus in a weird way you can get away with more stuff.

Some of the serious research us here at L&B enterprises have been doing:

OMG how cool is this– LEGO DIFFERENCE ENGINE!

Or, with some really nice videos of the Awesome Might of the Difference Engine– Mechano Difference Engine!

And, if you can HANDLE THIS:  Babbage’s BRAAAAAAIIIIIINNSSS!! at the Science Museum.

I’d like to thank everyone for your kind reception to the Ada Lovelace Bio Comic. I love drawing comics, but it’s not something I’d normally put up on this site my official portfolio site, which is supposed to present me as a person of high seriousness single-mindedly devoted to excellence in visual effects. Billions of blistering benedictions on Suw for organizing Ada Lovelace day, thanks for blowing my cover!

A common theme in the comments on the original Lovelace post was the possibility of a Babbage and Lovelace series. As I’ve wanted to mess around with comics for a while, and as this wild goose has presented itself to be chased, I figured I may as well spin off a separate blog for these shennanigans, being as they are very tangentially related to my bread-and-butter work. Thanks to my better half for the title– you’ll pry a pun from his cold, dead hands.

I don’t know if this will be exclusively Babbage and Lovelace comics. Until three weeks ago I would not have guessed I had a steampunk historical satire in me…. but it is tempting to kick stuff around. An in-depth story session produced the following:

–vampire poets!!!!
–Napoleon– cyborg?
–Isimbard Kingdom Brunel, sexy, hat?
–The Organist!

Not that this comic exists, but in doing some procrastination research I read the extraordinary Charles Babbage’s comic masterpiece of an autobiography. I urge everyone to read it immediately. It has charts. CHARTS!

Also of interest is On the economy of machinery and manufactures, where he invents the checklist, notes down every technique ever for doing anything with a spring, and:

Babbage! I’m being a bit unkind to him, he wasn’t that funny looking:

Anyways, I’m not really doing a Babbage and Lovelace comic. Just, maybe, you know, some panels here and there. Maybe some model sheets. A few pages with Educational Historical Interest. A whole freakin’ separate blog.

Teaser:

This brief biographical sketch was done for Ada Lovelace Day, organized by my good buddy Suw Charman. I think I in was a pub at the time.

This comic is now available as a free iPad app, complete with extensive notes, illustrations, and a ton of interesting historical documents!

True: Most of it. Except for the inaccurate bits. It’s close enough for comics.

Read More About Ada Lovelace. She didn’t really hate poetry, it’s just a good punchline. All her dialogue above is stuff she actually wrote. Except for the obvious exception.

Read More About Charles Babbage. Charles Babbage would totally have become a street-music destroying Masked Avenger if he could have. Actually he kind of did.

Of course you could just look them up on Wikipedia, the interwebs if full of Babbage and Lovelace stuff, and I should hope so! For the hardcore:

Ada Lovelace’s Paper on the Analytical Engine (are you HARD ENOUGH?)

Charles Babbage’s Autobiography (awesome, hilarious, fascinating, with VOLCANOES and MATH, why is this not in print?!?)

Behold the awesome might of the Difference Engine! Two working Difference Engines have been built in modern times- there’s one in the Science Museum in London, and that’s the one currently in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View California.

An hour and a half of interesting talks on the Difference Engine.

In Our Time radio piece on Ada Lovelace.