A 2010 movie sponsored by the British Council and directed by Claire Barker. It is a short, 15-minute vignette, a dramatization of a fictional dinner conversation between Charles Babbage, his religious father, Benjamin (“set in his ways, and stubborn as a mule”), Ada Lovelace (“you could consider God as a the highest level of programmer”), his mother (“as much as I love my husband, he does have a tendency for the dramatic….”), his wife, Georgiana (“My husband has a depth of thought none of us can quite fathom”), Mr. Clement (“his hands were steadier and still while stealing the designs of my engine”), his friend, Herschel, and others.

The short film is crisp, sharp, and quick, flitting in its dialogue from Newton’s Science, the place of the Bible, and of course, Babbage’s “Difference Engine”. There are some endearing recollections of incidences involving Babbage, reference to Ada’s addiction to alcohol and morphine, Babbage’s own untiring devotion to his ideas, his own admission that Georgiana reformed him from his “womanizing ways”, ending in a soliloquy about a researcher’s frustration when he realizes he is so far ahead of his time that his “life is wasted… ideas…wasted…that incessant noise…poking at my consciousness….”

The movie short serves as a great appetizer, making the viewer go find out more about this pioneering intellect.