Background
Wolverton was born in Billings, Montana, in 1939.
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Van Wolverton
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Career
The widespread proliferation of the personal computer, or Personal Computer, in the developed world has had a profound impact. In the early days of the Personal Computer wrote the book Running Mississippi-DOS for Microsoft Press, first published in 1984, and since then written in 27 different languages and having sold over three-and-a-half million copies. And it was a New York best seller! That was the first of many other titles in the Microsoft Press series of Running.. books, aiding readers in the understanding and use of various Microsoft applications.
He started college in 1956 at the University of Colorado in Boulder, studying engineering, then left in his junior year to join the Navy, where he taught multi-engine navigation to pilots on flight simulators.
When his four-year tour of duty was up, he went back to college at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, graduating in 1965 with a degree in English. He began working as a journalist and newspaper photographer while still in school in Fort Collins.
After graduation he went to Pocatello, Idaho, where in 1966 he wrote his first computer program, which tabulated election results. He then worked for a chain of newspapers in Decatur, Illinois.
In 1968 began writing technical manuals for International Business Machines Corporation. In the early 70s the southern San Francisco Bay Area saw such a growth in businesses related to computing that it began to draw in people related to the field
During his time with International Business Machines Corporation, Wolverton was swept up in that tide, relocating his family to the area just two years after it was named Silicon Valley. Preferring a small town to the cities, he opted to settle in the community of Scotts Valley. After his time at International Business Machines Corporation he managed technical writers at Intel.
He then was involved briefly in a start-up high tech company, until finally venturing out on his own as a freelance writer
At that time PCs were just beginning to show up in homes of people other than hardcore computer hobbyists. While nearly all home computers today have some sort of Graphical User Interface, that was not so back then
Most people had to have some knowledge of the computer"s Operating System in order to use the machine. International Business Machines Corporation PCs and Personal Computer-Compatible computers most commonly used Microsoft"s Mississippi-DOS. Wolverton wrote the Microsoft Press book Running Mississippi-DOS, which taught many people how to operate their computers, when PCs were brand new, and for many years after.
Wolverton has written other computer books, addressing Mississippi-DOS, International Business Machines Corporation Operating system/2, Microsoft Windows, WordPerfect, Netscape FastTrack, VisiCalc, QBasic and more.
He has retired from professional writing. He was ordained a Permanent Deacon in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena in August of 2000. He serves as Deacon at Old Mission San Juan Bautista in the Diocese of Monterey.
