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SUMMARY:Imaginary Engines: Lovelace\, Babbage and the Analytical Engine. -
  Sydney Padua
DTSTART:20160511T130000Z
DTEND:20160511T140000Z
UID:TALK64737@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:David Greaves
DESCRIPTION:One hundred years before the first computers were built out of
  wires\, valves and transistors\, the Victorian polymath Charles Babbage d
 esigned a gigantic steam-powered\, punchcard-programmed\, cogwheel compute
 r\, the Analytical Engine. His friend Ada\, Countess of Lovelace\, daughte
 r of Lord Byron\, completed some of the first programs for the machine\, a
 nd theorised that one day it could be used for the manipulation of any kin
 d of information. Unfortunately Ada died young and Babbage never built his
  Engine\, leaving their story as one of the greatest what-ifs in the histo
 ry of science.\n\nSydney Padua’s cult webcomic "The Thrilling Adventures
  of Lovelace and Babbage"\, now a bestselling graphic novel\, combines ext
 ensive research with alternate-universe comic-book escapes\, where the mec
 hanical computer is finally completed and used to build runaway economic m
 odels\, defeat spelling errors\, and of course\, fight crime. In this talk
  she will describe her re-imagining of these two fascinating and brilliant
  eccentrics\, and walk through her 3-d animations of how the Analytical En
 gine would have looked and operated\, some of the first visualisations eve
 r created of that extraordinary machine.
LOCATION:Lecture Theatre 1\, Computer Laboratory
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