Wadler's Blog

Sydney Padua explores an alternate universe wherein Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage complete the Analytical Engine and use it to (at the order of Queen Victoria) fight crime. I've blogged before about the web comic, but the book is even better.

Padua's tome reconciles hilarity with accuracy. I am not normally a fan of footnotes: if it is worth saying, say it inline; don't force your poor reader to break the flow of thought and eye, and leap to the bottom of the page. But here is the glorious exception, where the footnotes supplement, argue with, and occasionally threaten to overflow the comic. Even the footnotes have footnotes: endnotes cite sources for the dialogue, present pocket biographies of Ada and Charles' contemporaries Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Charles Dodgson, and George Boole, quote at length from original sources, and explain the workings of the Analytic Engine. In the midst of an illustrated fantasia riff on Alice in Wonderland, the footnotes pursue an academic war as to whether or not Babbage truly considered Lovelace to be the Empress of Number. Padua makes pursuit of Victorian arcana a thrilling adventure of its own. Highly recommended!

Labels: Comics, Computing, Mathematics