Lovelace and Babbage fight crime!
Today is Ada Lovelace Day and I thought I would mark it in an appropriate manner by declaring my love of the fantastic web comic ‘2D Goggles or The Amazing Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage‘.
Now I am not really a comic fan. That is one realm of geekdom which I haven’t much fallen into. (Although I do have some old copies of 2000 AD up in the loft that someone gave me once.) However, Lovelace and Babbage is different and I have been eagerly pouncing on new editions whenever (rather erratically) they appear.
Why? Well how could you resist stories that combine history, greek myth, steam punk, epic engineering, jokes about mathematics and literature, and extensive footnotes? Or a cast of characters that include, amongst others, Queen Victoria, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Charles Darwin, a whole host of romantic poets, and some flying monkeys? Not least the eponymous heroes, those early founders of the science of computing (and dynamic crime fighters), Charles Babbage and Lady Ada Lovelace?
Oh, did I mention the extensive footnotes?¹
If you have no idea what I am going on about, or if you haven’t even heard of Ada Lovelace or the Difference Engine, I suggest you begin your education here.
The pocket universe in which our two heroes fight crime was created, apparently by accident, by Sydney Padua for the 2009 Ada Lovelace Day. For this year, the really good news is that the web comic has been turned into an iPad app. I’ve downloaded and played with it today and my early verdict is that it is fabulous. It is this sort of thing that the iPad was invented for.
¹ Can you tell that I really love this stuff?
This content was originally posted on my old Strange Thoughts blog.