Edwin T. Cornelius, Jr.: Linguist, Materials Developer, Entrepreneur

Edwin T. Cornelius, Jr.

I first heard of Ed Cornelius in the early 1970s, when I was enrolled in the no-longer-offered MA in EFL program at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. I first met him in the late 1970s, when I worked for the Curriculum Development Department of the then-independent ELS Language Centers offices in California. Later, in the early 1980s, when ELS' Publications Division (for which I was editor) was being readied for sale to Prentice-Hall, I was laid off—which led to work with Ed as an editor-writer in Oregon. I will forever be grateful to Ed for many things that I learned there.

First, Ed gave me many opportunities to work in an area I had come to love: ELT materials development. While working for and with him, I typed, word-processed, proofread and edited manuscripts, and also wrote original materials.

Next, Ed introduced me to computers. In the early 80s, when I began to work for him, writing for his materials-development projects was primarily done on networked computers at his home. I was quite a good typist, but was afraid of computers then. Finally, when I could no longer keep up with the other writers by using my IBM Selectric and white-out, I said, "OK. Show me how to use that thing (a computer)." Eventually, my confidence levels increased, and at one point, I actually used two computers simultaneously, when I was involved in an indexing project. At first I used a DOS machine and primarily worked with WordStar. Later, when PageMaker made its debut, I learned to use a Mac (which I didn't like very much at first, but which is now my platform of choice).

Ed also introduced me to keyboarding for typesetting (using an IBM Composer), and I learned the hard way about such topics as spacing after end punctuation and the difference between a hyphen and en dash and em dash.

In addition, I received my introduction to the Internet from Ed, since he had a Compuserve account and regularly used it to research new materials-development projects (of which there were many: his list of publications is staggering).

Moreover, Ed taught me to use a telex (I worked for him before faxes had become widely used) and, since he had video and audio production facilities to support the texts he produced, I gained some experience in character generation (using a Chyron) and audio project management.

My experience with Ed also gave me a behind-the-scenes look at how educational publishing works: I met editors who came to discuss new projects of his, worked with book designers and type houses and manuscript typists and desktop publishers, was involved for a while in order fulfillment, and frequently caught a glimpse of Ed's entrepreneurial side as he negotiated new product-development deals.

I also observed Ed's remarkable linguistic skills on many occasions, as I heard him switch from English to Spanish, Korean, Mandarin, Russian, and many other languages.

In a word, I found Ed Cornelius to be a creative genius, the hardest worker I have ever known, a practicing applied linguist, and an entrepreneur par excellence who always had many irons in the fire. I also discovered that despite a "Hail fellow, well met" persona which he often displayed in public, he was actually somewhat retiring and was above all a sensitive, caring human being.

I left Ed's company in 1990 to relocate to Arizona, where I had family. I haven't been regularly in touch with Ed since that time, but I've never forgotten him or the many things I learned from him. As a matter of fact, I'll always hold him in the highest regard and be very grateful for what I learned from him—more so, in fact, than I'm able to say.