A Little Bit About Reaping What We Sow

I’m sitting here typing these words on a laptop computer.  I wonder how many others around the globe are doing the same thing.  I imagine the number to be in the millions.  In fact, I’m enjoying this writing session in the library and can hear the tick, tick, tick of other keyboards.  This is a detail we take for granted.  How did this come to be?  How am I able to do such a thing?  In short, the computer has changed the world.

Now we move onto the meat of my point.  When was the very first computer invented?  Before a little research, I may have guessed it was sometime in the 20’s or 30’s.  I would have been right, albeit one century off the mark.  The first mechanical computer was invented in 1822, by a man named Charles Babbage.  Until yesterday, I don’t believe I had even heard his name spoken.  Why?  He never completed his “Deference Engine”.  According to some things I’ve read, it was due to lack of focus and capital.  The government was funding the project, but lost confidence in Babbage’s work.  They didn’t see the value in his invention.  His deference engine wasn’t built until 1991!  It was built to specifications that would have been used in 1822.  It worked.  If funding would have continued for the project, he would have made the first fully functioning mechanical computer; complete with hard copy printouts by the way.

How often do events like this happen in our lives?  We may expend a great deal of energy, thought, time, and even money into our goals without one single result; at least of which we are aware.  We plant seeds we do not sow.  We do not reap the rewards of our labor.  Does this mean our labor is any less important or successful?  I’ll let you decide based on the words I’ve already written; the words I’m writing on this laptop computer.