Typing 101

Back in the day--before smart phones, before computers, there was the typewriter. The arrangement of the keys has stayed fairly close to the original from so many years ago even through the evolution of the electric typewriter and then the electronic of computers and smart phones. Strange though that we would grow up learning our alphabet letters and then be faced with a keyboard with all the letters jumbled. Why?

The credit goes to Christopher Latham Sholes for the seemingly haphazard arrangement of letters that first appeared with the invention of the typewriter sometime in the 1870s. The keyboard arrangement was called QWERTY. Look at your keyboard and you'll see that those are the first letters on the top row.

Sholes was a journalist and newspaper publisher. His original typewriter apparently had the letters alphabetically arranged but as he used his invention, he found the keys colliding and sticking as his speed and skill at typing increased. He reordered the keys to make the process of typing easier and more efficient.

Of course in my mind I kind of see the connection between the keyboard and life. Often our lives are like a confusing keyboard of letters. They seem haphazard, often not making a lot of sense when you look at them. But just as a skilled typist can touch the keys to make words, paragraphs, great works of literature, so God's hands on our haphazard lives can bring order, grace and great works of love.