James Essinger – författare

Jacquard's Web is the story of some of the most ingenious inventors the world has ever known, a fascinating account of how a hand-loom invented in Napoleonic France led to the development of the modern information age. James Essinger, a master story-teller, shows through a series of remarkable and meticulously researched historical connections (spanning two centuries and never investigated before) that the Jacquard loom kick-started a process of scientific evolution which would lead directly to the development of the modern computer. The invention of Jacquard's loom in 1804 enabled the master silk-weavers of Lyons to weave fabrics 25 times faster than had previously been possible. The device used punched cards, which stored instructions for weaving whatever pattern or design was required; it proved an outstanding success. These cards can very reasonably be described as the world's first computer programmes. In this engaging and delightful book, James Essinger reveals a plethora of extraordinary links between the nineteenth-century world of weaving and today's computer age: to give just one example, modern computer graphics displays are based on exactly the same principles as those employed in Jacquard's special woven tableaux. Jacquard's Web also introduces some of the most colourful and interesting characters in the history of science and technology: the modest but exceptionally dedicated Jacquard himself, the brilliant but temperamental Victorian polymath Charles Babbage, who dreamt of a cogwheel computer operated using Jacquard cards, and the imaginative and perceptive Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's only legitimate daughter.

The partnership of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace was one that would change science forever. They were an unlikely pair – one the professor son of a banker, the other the only child of an acclaimed poet and a social-reforming mathematician – but perhaps that is why their work was so revolutionary. They were the pioneers of computer science, creating plans for what could have been the first computer. They each saw things the other did not: it may have been Charles who designed the machines, but it was Ada who could see their potential. But what were they like? And how did they work together? Using previously unpublished correspondence between them, Charles and Ada explores the relationship between two remarkable people who shared dreams far ahead of their time.

Thalidomide: patented in Germany as a non-toxic cure-all for sleeplessness and morning sickness. A wonder drug with no side effects. We know differently now. Today, thalidomide is a byword for tragedy and drug reform – a sign of what happens when things aren’t done ‘the right way’. But when it was released in the 1950s, it was the best thing since penicillin – something that doctors were encouraged to prescribe to all of their patients. Nobody could anticipate what it actually did: induce sleeping, prevent morning sickness, and drastically harm unborn children. But, whilst thalidomide rampaged and ravaged throughout most of the West, it never reached the United States. It landed on the desk of Dr Frances Kelsey, and there it stayed as she battled bureaucracy, patriarchy, and the Establishment in an effort to prove that it was dangerous. Frankie is her story.

Through the infamous divorce of her parents, Ada Lovelace became the most talked-about child in Georgian Britain. This riveting biography tells the extraordinary yet little known story of her life and times-when mathematics was as fashionable as knitting among women and Ada became the world's first computer programmer. But for her era's view on gender, Ada would single-handedly have started the digital age more than two centuries ago.

A romantic thriller set in the world of chess and featuring a heavy erotic element.