The very first “computer” I used was really a Burroughs punched-card reader. I used it to help me tabulate the results of a survey I had done for my thesis for a Journalism degree at the University of Chile. (This was somehow equivalent to a B.A. degree in the U.S.) I used the machine in 1961 and I was very pleased with the short time it took to analyze all the data I had accumulated in a survey by 5,000 subjects.

In 1961, the first IBM 1401 arrived in Chile. It had an incredible 4-Kbyte memory, a 1402 punch/reader machine that could process 400 hundred cards per minute, and a 1403 printer that printed 600 lines per minute. (In Chile, 12 of the 14 existing computers running until 1965 were IBMs.)

The first digital computer put to work in academia was a German Standard Elektrik Lorenz computer ER-56 (we gave it a Spanish nickname ‘‘Lorenzo’’). It was installed in 1962 in the School of Engineering at the University of Chile. The acquisition process began in 1959, and it’s value was about US$400,000. It used transistor technology, with memory for 3,000 words of 7 digits, a 60-Kbyte magnetic drum, and a paper-tape reader. It was operated without an operating system by programs written in machine language and an Algol converter (Alcor).

When I got my Master of Arts at the University of Georgia in 1968, computers were not yet being used at that School.

I went back to Chile and became a professor at the University of Chile in Chillan and then a professor and dean at a University in the North in the city of Antofagasta. While there, I used a “real computer” for the first time to distribute chairs. I think it was an IBM older than the 360.

I came to the University of Texas in Austin in 1974 and switched my studies from Journalism to Education and Computer Sciences. I struggled punching cards in FORTRAN and COBOL but I did better with BASIC.

I took several computer courses, and then I started writing my dissertation in 1977 using TECO (Text Editor and Corrector) on a DEC 10 computer. Unfortunately the university decided to end the contract with the company providing the DEC 10 services, and I ended up writing my dissertation on a IBM electric typewriter.

After I obtained my Ph.D. in Computer Science and Education, I was hired by the Dallas Independent School District to program a voice synthesizer working with a a DEC PDP 11 “minicomputer”. All the programming was in Unix. Then, when that project ended, I moved to train teachers in the classrooms how to use computers. The computers were from Tandy corporation and we used them to teach Social Sciences to immigrant children. I managed to find someone at Tandy who burned an EPROM which was able to divide the screen in two and have a bilingual computer in Spanish and English.

When my parents had to move to Miami for my father’s health, I moved to Miami, also. There, I obtained a job with Viewdata Corporation of America, a precursor of the Internet.

Viewtron was a joint venture of Knight-Ridder newspapers, AT&T, and other minor partners, including Scripps-Howard and McClatchy newspapers. They launched the Viewtron system commercially in 1983. Viewtron was a videotex-based information service, delivered over phone lines into homes. Viewtron developed software that would allow IBM, Commodore and Apple computer users (who also had modems) to access the system. The Sceptre system that allowed for TV access had the same microprocessor as a contemporary personal computer.

The information was located in room-sized, centralized computers, but each city/market had only localized data, meaning that there were isolated islands of information, rather than a whole, linked network. The entire system rested on a broadcasting framework, not on users. However, community features were what allowed USENET (from Users Network) to flourish around this same time, and would lead to moderate success for services like CompuServe and Prodigy in the near future.

I programmed educational programs using an ATEX terminal with a programing system designed originally for newspapers. The system had a terminal-and-server paradigm, using modified DEC PDP-11 minicomputer hardware running a custom Atex multi-user operating system. The proprietary keyboards included a number of innovations which greatly facilitated text entry and editing. I enjoyed programming macros on the ATEX.

While I was working at Viewdata I was also volunteering at the recently moved office of United Bible Societies in Miami. They had moved from Mexico City, and they had never used technology before. I was able to help them with a word processor and little by little I felt that God was telling me that much more could be done for Bible Translation.

At the initiative of the International Translation Coordinator of that time, who was originally from Canada and had experience with portable computers in Africa, a position was opened for a Computer Assisted Text Processing Specialist. The mission was to computerize all the translation projects in the Americas Region. So I submitted my résumé and was hired in January 1985. At the end of 1985, I was already traveling to remote places in South America to bring “portable” computers, such as TRS-80 – model 100 and solar panels to charge them, to several remote translation projects. Later, I was able to convert translations done using very diverse computers systems (such as CP/M, EBCDIC character encoding, translations stored in bubble memories and translations stored in magnetic tape) to the MS DOS operating system.

At the office in Miami, they first used a typesetting software on a Texas Instrument computer to print poofs of columns, not pages, of the Bible.

Later, everything was converted to Windows operating system, and the typesetting program was replaced by Ventura Publisher, and the most common software for word processing was WordPerfect. Much later, around 1995, United Bible Societies started the development of a specialized software for Bible translation named “Paratext”. It contained a complete environment for the translating, editing, checking and publishing of a Bible translation, along with numerous tools and resources needed by translators. I contributed to this project by writing the online Help System for it.

While working in United Bible Societies, I worked very closely with Wycliffe Bible Translators. After almost 20 years with United Bible Societies, I switched to become a missionary with Wycliffe and, just before retiring, created an online stand-alone learning system for Wycliffe missionaries, using Moodle (a free and open-source learning management system (LMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License). It was developed on pedagogical principles and is very adaptable.