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This comic is now available as a free iPad app, complete with extensive notes, illustrations, and a ton of interesting historical documents!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.
PDF
I have been pointed here by a mysterious Victorian villain called Cavalorn.
This is a reprehensible traduction of the founding heroes of our logical art and science of programming…
When and where will you be publishing it? And which body parts will you accept in payment for a signed copy?
I was pointed here by a mathematician. I’m a poet. I’m also now hysterically laughing and cannot stop long enough to pen prose. Help!
I was pointed here by a tweet…and now i must needs find a new fan! Brilliant!
This is ridiculously cool, please please keep it up.
And from this moment on, she should be remembered as “Ada Loveless”.
Kick their asses!
More! More! Please?
This was great.
You — you amazing, astonishing person. May I adore you from afar and write you passionate letters of love in my head? Please?
‘scuse me, miss, but has anyone ever told you you are FOURTEEN different flavours of awesome? Two for every day of the week!
I was pointed here by a poet, of all people. (I am myself a poet.) Hilarious!
OMG, I was explainging to someone how Ada Lovelace was totally awesome, and probably fought crime, and it is like you have taken what was in my brain and made into an AWESOME COMIC.
AWESOME! Brilliant execution. May you achieve fame beyond your wildest dreams… and… write more comics.
Okay, this is awesome to the power of awesome.
This is completely awesome.
You must go on!
May the muse visit you with story ideas and suffifient caffienated substances of your choice to bring them into the shared light of day!
You rock.
Hmmmm… is it possible that Ada had an illegitimate son with Babbage… a midget… who grew up to be the insane genius DR. LOVELESS?
This is fantastic.
I was pointed here by my daughter, who is a computer geek…and so is her sister…and so am I (for the last 50 years)…aren’t you aware of the rumor that Admiral Grace Murray Hopper was their grand-daughter?
Tell me there will be more!
This is excellent. Thank you!
This is awesome! I love the addition of Babbage (whom I’ve never heard of, obviously my loss… that you’re totally correcting! Yay you! \o/). That final panel is so, so awesome. Of *course* they fought crime together… it’s the only logical outcome! :D
Just read through all the strips you’ve posted so far — love ‘em. Keep them coming, please.
omg this is fsking BRILLIANT.
You, madam, are made of pure win. You pricked your finger and bled win all over this comic. Brilliant!
Awesome style, love the writing. Spot on with the Twitter reference.
They are sooo going to want to make this into a film. (Hey, if they can do it for car-morphing robots…) Any takers on who would play the leads…? :)
Ada is also a movie star! Played by the geekilicious Tilda Swinton!
Jolly fun. Especially Twitter.
But to give credit where due, the second one wasn’t done for us at the Computer History Museum.
Nathan Myhrvold, ex Microsoft CTO, commissioned it, but we talked him into lending it to us for a while, which was very kind of him.
We have it through the end of this year, and it gets fired up most days @ 2pm. I
I.e. Trained docents turn the crank.
Think f this as the first known computing startup that spent a lot of someone else’s money, had a workable design, but never shipped product, at least in part because the designer wasn’t easy to work with.
Wow, I TOTALLY thought Myhrvold was kidding when he said he was going to put it in his living room! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1sEowi1Txc I can hardly find room for my laptop in my living room. — I’ll correct the copy.
What, flimsy attempts to connect Lady Ada with Miguelito Loveless, and not a single one to her more obvious namesake? I am sooooo disappointed.
Brilliant. Keep it up!
Is there a chance to pre-order the (hopefully) yet unpublished hardcopy. Should we all sign up for a subscription service?
Or is the author waiting for a government grant?
I want more…
looks like my wall “forever thank you” needs to be updated. can you send me a photo? :)
it’s great!!!!!!
Just awesome!!
Well, it took me awhile to get here, but I found it…Love the Babbage/Lovelace comic! And hey…*waves to Captain Red Llewellyn from Second Life* – nice to see a familiar face!! :)
And a programming language was named after her, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)
Please, o most splendid and witty Sidney Padua, would you please please please do more adventures for the alternate universe Babbage and Lovelace? It would be so very woot!
pointed here by aubergine_pilot from my lj
Oops! There are more! My fumble!
Totally awesome! As a 1960′s programmer & mathematician I find this series as good as XKCD (http://xkcd.com/10/) “A webcomic of romance,
sarcasm, math, and language.” A must for college students. Superb.
i am both a licensed quantuum mechanic, and the holder of a poetic license (issued by a poetic justice), so i find your work doubly amusing.
i came here via times online top science blogs list (via pharyngula).
your work is so funny, i must twitter you to my friends.
wait, this is a fan…
Thank you for this!! I’m presently writing a paper on dear Lovelace and was quite amused to stumble across this. Best from Portland, Sarah
This is great!! I must add it to my college course as computer history!
Now available in print! http://www.gudmagazine.com/vault/5/Ada+Lovelace%253A+The+Origin%2521 =)
Omg. So awesome.
now I want a fan that is also a cellphone.
Simply amazing and brilliant. I’ve learned a thing or two here. Thanks.
This is so beautiful I nearly cried. You are a certifiable genius/maniac. Please make sure that your planned take over of the world (I am assuming there is one somewhere in amongst your plans) is as brilliantly thought out and presented. World leaders will simply hand you their countries. Good luck, Jonts
Currently (8/2010) I’m an unemployed programmer analyst and sometime engineer.
Somehow, the Fates have sent me toward 2D Goggles, Ada, Brunel, and Babbage. You must be the Head Fate, of course.
Sydney, I know you are busy animating Narnia and all that, but your witty cartoons keep me and many more science, poetry, math, and Star Trek engineering geeks laughing through the madness around us all.
Keep us all laughing, won’t you? We won’t allow any musicians to disturb your drawings and animations in the meantime…
Floyd
Your comic is absolutely wonderful and I’m so glad that I stumbled upon it. We’ll happily mention it on our next program.
Just wanted to say “Absolutely love your comic!”
I’m fascinated to meet Ada Lovelace. Especially as I’m designing sets for a new play about her near contemporary Margaret Fuller – another smart, strong-minded feminist who crashed the boys’ club of Transcendentalism. Just wish I could steampunk this.
BTW also love the thaumatrope I made from your design. Thanks!
being a computer programmer myself makes me very proud of my job;.”
Is there more? Where please? Pretty please? Pretty please with binary sprinkles and a powdering of bites?