The design, publication, editing and maintenance for Prism Crafting Publications is being performed on a computer that is resourced with solar power.

Web Publishing Roots

The year was about 1980. While I was taking a Hebrew class and thinking about all the tedious memorization I wished that I could load a dictionary/lexicon onto a computer. It would be so much faster and easier. It was expensive in those days but I had the incentive to buy a small computer, a very small one. It was a handheld TRS 80. I think it had about 1.5k RAM and an interface for a cassette tape player. It had one line to program with. I actually succeeded in programming a very small lookup tool for Hebrew. I realized that computers work well with numbers. I put the Hebrew alphabet in a number system and used multiplication to devise words. So it worked something like a number character multiplied by 10,000 took the first place, then times a thousand took the second, and the number representation took the third. (Hebrew stems have three place characters.) I could load somewhere between 50 and 100 words and do a lookup. Thus I learned programming in a very simple way.

A while later I heard my Hebrew professor say (I respected him very much) that he got a personal computer, an Apple. So I also spent a lot of money and bought an Apple IIe. Personal computing was very, very expensive in those days. I remember reading, when this was happening about how it was as if all one had to do was to announce a new product in hardware or software and interested people would as much as throw money at them.

When I brought my new computer home I began programming. Once again I couldn’t afford software. As I sat down I was overwhelmed with having 24 lines on the screen to program with. One line is simple and a good teacher. After getting used to a bigger display I discovered that programming gave me a good sensation. I would try something and would receive an immediate response from the compiler with details of what was wrong. This intense feedback satisfied me and I could program and learn to program for hours and hours. I learned basic. Tried machine language. Learned Paschal. And learned C. The man who owned the computer store I shopped at said that he had only heard the words C and Apple II together once. This was because I had a C compiler for my Apple II that I had upgraded to a II GS.

In those days I was sitting in the library at seminary. I loved what I heard about the martyr William Tyndale who translated the Greek New Testament and much of the Hebrew Old Testament into English. I was sitting there reading his New Testament translation and I thought how more people should be reading this. And thought then that I could do that, make a publication and edit it for modern reading. The New Testament I read there was out of print. I copied the entire volume, page for page, on a copier (except for the introductory material). That work alone was a lot. Later I did the same for the Pentateuch. Then I typed them into my computer’s word processor. I typed every word, starting on the Apple II, then migrating to an IBM PC clone. Over the years I hand typed these two volumes. In my secular work as a layman I finally gained a position as a database programmer. I worked with Access and MS SQL. I had begun years ago on DB 4.

Mockingbird

After many laptop upgrades for my personal computer over the years and then after being laid off from work I devoted myself to the publications. Working with C# and Visual Studio Express I wrote and rewrote applications to work with Tyndale’s text and the ancient biblical languages. That work is now in the finishing process.