A century before electronic computers, there was the Analytical Engine, a giant, coal-powered mechanical brain. Sounds like a steampunk fantasy, but it was the real deal: the first general-purpose computing device. Not even its inventor, the eccentric Victorian-era mathematician Charles Babbage, grasped its full potential. It was his friend and fellow visionary Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, who had that critical insight. Sydney’s new book, "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer" is part graphic novel, part historical investigation, part technical primer, part pictorial tribute to a truly wondrous machine.
