Passages

Abstract

Sydney Padua's The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage violates the rules of Passages in a technical sense; the book was published in 2015, so cannot be a classic, right? I could excuse cheating on the grounds that covering this delightful book is so important that I can't wait until 2025. After all, I might be hit by a bus; ACM SIGSOFT might dissolve; rogue AI might go all Skynet and murder us all; less catastrophically, I might tire of doing these columns or you might tire of reading them. A much better excuse,however, is that Padua's book really dates from a throwaway cartoon she posted on the web in 2009. In any case, this month's column is a review of Sydney Padua's 2015 book, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage - with Interesting Curious Anecdotes of Celebrated and Distinguished Characters, Fully Illustrating a Variety of Instructive and Amusing Scenes; As Performed Within and Without the Remarkable Difference Engine (Embellished with Portraits and Scientific Diagrams).