In 1990, I purchased a Bible software program for my first computer. It was QuickVerse 1.0. QuickVerse became a close companion in my personal Bible study for the next 15-years. I recently ran across Craig Rairdin on Facebook.

1 Bible Study Software! The most robust, user-friendly Bible software available. QuickVerse 10 Deluxe contains 252 study tools ideal for preaching, teaching and personal Bible study. QV10 has been completely rebuilt on the advanced CROSS software platform. Searching for scriptures and topical content is intelligent and lightning-fast.

Craig is the creator of QuickVerse, and the subsequent founder & developer of Pocket-Bible, marketed through Laridian. Craig was kind enough to give us this interview.

This is part one. Hi Craig, thanks for granting us this interview.

Give us a quick timeline to help our readers connect the history of QuickVerse. • I graduated in December 1981 and started working at Rockwell in January, 1982. • I started working on the program that would become QuickVerse from home in late 1987 while working at Rockwell. • I interviewed with Bob Parsons in the Fall of 1987, but he didn’t have any openings. • I completed my Bible program in the Fall of 1988 and showed it to Bob. Play free wedgie games. • I left Rockwell to join Parsons Technology in November, 1988, as Director, Church Software Division. • I was promoted to Vice President of Parsons Technology in 1990-91.

Where did you grow up? I was born and raised in Cedar Rapids, IA and still live there (actually right next door in Marion, IA). I went to school at the University of Iowa just 30 miles south. Was faith always part of your life? I grew up going to church, but not one that preached the Gospel.

I first heard the Gospel as part of a “lay witness weekend” where the church brought in people from around the state who had had a salvation experience to tell people in the church how to be saved – because of course there was nobody already in the church who was doing that. Very bizarre when I look back on it. I accepted Jesus Christ during my junior year in college and immediately connected with a campus ministry at the University of Iowa, through which I met my wife.

How did you come up with the idea of QuickVerse? Back in the late 80’s I got my first computer and was browsing through a software catalog when I found a set of about 10 disks containing the KJV Bible on sale for $50.

It occurred to me that I could write a little program that accessed the Bible and would let me quickly go to a verse or search for a word or phrase. I originally wrote it with the idea that I would give a copy to my pastor and he and I would use it for Bible study. I wasn’t thinking about selling it when I first started in on it. How did you choose the name? The program was originally called “Logos Bible Processor”, which was kind of a take-off on “word” processing. I sold it under that name for several months.

When I took the program to Parsons Technology in 1988, we decided it needed a better name – something that wasn’t so esoteric. We talked about names like “Sword’s Edge”, because the program was “quick and powerful,' That led us to names that involved “quick”, like “Quick Search”, “Quick Bible”, and “Quick Word”. I think Bob Parsons actually came up with “QuickVerse.' I didn’t like it at first, but looking back on it, it’s a great name. Tell us about your relationship with Bob Parsons.

Then and now. I met Bob in 1987. He was an accountant for a leasing company who wrote a personal financial management program called MoneyCounts for MS-DOS. He lived across the street from a friend of mine. My friend introduced me to MoneyCounts, which I started using at home and at my church, where I was treasurer. When I met Bob in the Fall of 1987, he had just left his full-time job to devote his full attention to MoneyCounts.

I had been working as a programmer at Rockwell International for about six years and was looking for a new challenge, so I contacted him to see if he was looking for programmers. He invited me to come interview. I felt like we “connected” but he really wasn’t looking to hire anyone.

He commented that he had just hired the best programmer he could afford – himself. We talked a lot about his idea of creating really great software then selling it super-cheap so that it was an impulse buy. He was selling MoneyCounts for $12 at the time. He would take out full-page, full-color ads in major computer magazines, which made it look like he was a big company, but in reality it was just Bob and his wife Martha manning the phones. After I wrote my Bible program and started selling it from my home, I got ahold of Bob to see if I could rent a mailing list of his MoneyCounts customers.