Lovelace And Babbage, The Book

My idle-hours webcomic, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, will be published by Pantheon as a book in 2013/14! Pantheon is the legendary publisher of Very Important Graphic Novels Maus, Persepolis, and Habibi, so, you know, NO PRESSURE. Regular updates at 2dgoggles

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  • Simply brilliant! Any chance of setting up a notification list when the book is ready for publication? I’ve added a note on the calendar to check on this in a year.

    Best,–Geoff

  • Add me to the notification list. This will be SUCH a cool present to give to friends (and especially female children thereof). I intend to buy quite a few copies.

  • Have you thought about using Patreon to allow your fans to show their appreciation?
    Buying two T-shirts for my boys, and can’t wait for the book!

    fannily yours,
    Jon Carnes

  • Arriving in April 2015!
    I’m reading an advance copy, and you hooked me at the very. first. page!
    (And got me chuckling on the second with “imaginary numbers”!)

    EAN: 978-0-307-90827-8 ebook: 978-0-307-90828-5 (no idea if there will be a Jacquard edition…)

  • First Barnes & Noble I went to had your book on their computer inventory, but they couldn’t find it! Finally gave up and tried a different B&N store. They had 2 copies in graphic novel section. Half way finished and find it absolutely brilliant. Heard about it on Science Friday. Can’t believe the tremendous detail and humor. Absolutely love it. You should have Pantheon complain to B&N about lack of promotion. First graphic novel I’ve read in years and I can’t say enough about it. Thank you.

  • Full circle …

    My copy of the book was, almost, delivered Friday. But I did not get to the door in time to receive anythign more that a ‘we tried to deliver’ ticket. I thought about swinging by the Post Office on the way back from seeing my dad on Saturday but of course the PO closes at 14:00 on Saturday …
    Thus it was on my regular walk into town on Monday that I headed toward the PO, idly wondering if my friend Bob was anywhere arounf (he’s a postman, so there’s logic there!) To my delight he was the one on counter/parcel duty. Parcel clutched tightly in hands, well ok in the bag I had with me, I metaphorically skipped away. I managed to get all of two minutes away beore I had to stop and open the package, just to look and hold! Wonderful! 🙂
    Then a thought struck me – don’t laught I do get them! I usually haunt a coffee shop on a Tuesday and it so happens that this coffee shop is the one in which I announced by discovery of Lovelace and Babbage in fits of giggles. So what better place than to actually start reading the book? And that is what I am going to do as soon as I stop typing here!
    Just knowing I have the book, unread, in the bag beside me make the wait all worthwhile, so thank you Ms Padua! 🙂

  • “Very interesting” indeed.

    I have just finished, and loved every page of your hilarious book.

    I have been a sort of number cruncher myself for over thirty years, having started off, back in the day, punching my own programs onto wads of data cards which I fed into the mouth of a rather Babbage-esque behemoth of a device – so I found your book quite nostalgic – and very relevant too, because for most of my profession since those days, I have been using a computer language dedicated to, and named after The Countess of Lovelace; namely Ada, or as it is now in its latest evolution, Ada 2012 !

    I think every Ada programmer should have a copy of ‘Lovelace and Babbage’ next to their Ada Language Reference Manual.

    And so, yes… her spirit lives on, within all manner of machines from spacecraft to submarines.

    Emil.

  • Read about your book in Discover magazine in USA. Took a couple of tries to snag it out of my state’s interlibrary network, because it was so new. (Sorry I could not afford to buy it myself!) Absolutely loved it!! Do another one. Please….

  • Oh Sydney Padua how i adore you ~~ got your great Lovelace & Babbage book for my birthday and haven’t stopped laughing yet! it is totally wonderful and i’m on my 3rd reading, finding new stuff every page! Gonna take it to the beach where fellow beachers will include a far-out programmer for the govt (subcontractor), a longtime science/math teacher who flunked quantum physics once upon a time, another science teacher, and several mere humans… they will adore it, but i’m the one who can’t do math but is well up on Victorian attitudes … oh boy oh boy oh boy i am still laughing about Q Victoria, D of Wellington & Horse being rendered horse de combat by the printing out of the kitten (awwwww!) as well as much much much else!! live long & prosper!!! and thank you thank you thank you!!!!

  • Dear Sydney,
    Please can you get in touch with me urgently re the book? I would really appreciate it. I have been trying to send you a message using the contact form on your website but I don’t think it’s going to happen (coy or not coy).
    Thanks and all best wishes,
    Barbara

  • Hi Ms Padua

    First, allow me to say how much I enjoyed your book, and as a long-time student of the Engines, I appreciate the sheer depth and breadth of research that evidently went into is. A true scholarly tour de force.

    One interesting point to make is that where you are explaining some of the functions of the Analytical Engine, you show Babbage’s implementation of the inverter (NOT) gate and the AND gate. You say you have not found an OR gate, but there may be one there.

    However, you don’t need one! An AND gate plus an inverter gives you a NAND gate: and you can implement any logical function in existence armed only with NAND gates!

    The same thing can be done with NOR gates, but the process demands more hardware. So Babbage was definitely on song with the hardware.

  • Madame, you may be one of the best graphic novelists and cartoonists out there! I have the Lovelace and Babbage graphic novel and ever since you made that announcement about making it, I was so excited! The webcomics are awesome too and well drawn and very hilarious. The style of humor in your comics kind of make me think I’m reading a British version of Hark! A Vagrant. Also, you are one of my keen inspirations of becoming an animator(which is one of my dream jobs in the future) and a possible cartoonist. And also, you made Ada Lovelace my favorite historical figure and got me into looking up Google Books(which by the way is fantastic!). Keep up the awesome work and draw more comics! P.S: I hope one day Lovelace and Babbage will be adapted to a animated motion picture made by either Aardman or maybe DreamWorks. Totally would go see it!

    ~ From A Happy Fan

  • I recently purchased this book and currently thoroughly enjoy reading it at my Victorian fireplace with a nice cup of tea (China Yunnan, in hand-painted Royal Aynsley china of course). It’s the only way to spend Christmas. The footnotes and endnotes are as informative as the comic is entertaining, and the book itself is a lovely production of pleasing size and weight done in an appropriate style (I love the quality of the paper and the bright cyan colour that would have been popular with the Victorians).

    It will take pride of place on my bookshelves right next to ‘The Cogwheel Brain’ by Doron Swade, which brings to life not only Babbage’s quest to build his engines, but also provides an account of the belated realisation of his Difference Engine by intrepid engineers at the London Science Museum.

  • Ok, I admit that though I pre-ordered the book at the first possibility, I thought it would just be hard copy of the website comics, and didn’t actually read it until just now. Wow! I didn’t expect how much would be added! Really an amazing work.

    Though please don’t ever let the website go down. When the interview with the cat vanishes, the world will have lost a thing of rare beauty.

  • Comment dirais-je?
    Dédaléen… Et heureux.
    (Maybe like your hat.)

  • I have just finished reading the book and I have to say how much I enjoyed it. One of the best books I have read in years.
    The details on the punched cards in the appendix was of great interest. During my apprenticeship in the 1950’s (at English Electric), Iwas given a job to transfer data from cards like the IBM 80-column card shown onto a tape similar to the Colossus tape shown. This was used in an automatic drilling machine.

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