Byte (magazine)
Byte (stylized as BYTE) was a microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage.[1]
Categories
Byte started in 1975, shortly after the first personal computers appeared as kits advertised in the back of electronics magazines. Byte was published monthly, with an initial yearly subscription price of $10. Whereas many magazines were dedicated to specific systems or the home or business user's perspective, Byte covered developments in the entire field of "small computers and software", and sometimes other computing fields such as supercomputers and high-reliability computing. Coverage was in-depth with much technical detail, rather than user-oriented.
The company was purchased by McGraw-Hill in 1979, a watershed event that led to the rapid purchase of many of the early computer magazines by larger publishers. By this time the magazine had taken on a more serious journal-like atmosphere and began to refer to itself as "the small systems journal". It became an influential publication; Byte was selected as the medium used by Xerox PARC to publicize Smalltalk in 1981.
Like many generalist magazines, Byte suffered in the 1990s due to declining advertising sales. McGraw-Hill's publishing arm was sold to CMP Media in May 1998, and the new owners immediately laid off almost everyone in the magazine arm, ending publication with the already-complete July edition. The associated website continued to draw 600,000 page views a month, prompting the owners to re-open the magazine in a pure online format in 1999. It continued as an online publication until 2009, when it shut down, only to be revived in 2011 and then shut down for good in 2013.
Early editions, formation of Kilobaud[edit]
Just prior to planning Byte, Green had a run-in with the Internal Revenue Service. When he told his lawyer that he planned on starting a new magazine, he was advised to put it in someone else's name. He had recently gotten back together with his ex-wife, Virginia Londner Green, who had been listed as the business manager of 73 Inc. since December 1974.[6] She incorporated Green Publishing in March 1975 to take over publication.[7]
The first issue of the new magazine was the September 1975 edition. Articles in the first issue included Which Microprocessor For You? by Hal Chamberlin, Write Your Own Assembler by Dan Fylstra and Serial Interface by Don Lancaster. Among the more important articles was the introduction of the Kansas City standard for storing data on cassette tape, which was used by most machines of the era. It included advertisements from Godbout, MITS, Processor Technology, SCELBI, and Sphere, among others.[8]
Until the December 1988 issue,[9] a continuing feature was Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar, a column in which electronic engineer Steve Ciarcia described small projects to modify or attach to a computer. This was later spun off to become the magazine Circuit Cellar, focusing on embedded computer applications. Significant articles in this period included the insertion of floppy disk drives into S-100 computers, publication of source code for various computer languages (Tiny C, BASIC, assemblers), and coverage of the first microcomputer operating system, CP/M.
The first four issues were produced in the offices of 73 and Wayne Green was listed as the publisher. One day in November 1975 Green came back to the office and found that the Byte magazine staff had moved out and taken the January issue with them.[10] For the February 1976 issue, the company changed its name to Byte Publications.[11] Carl Helmers was a co-owner of Byte Publications.[12] The February issue has a short story about the move; "After a start which reads like a romantic light opera with an episode or two reminiscent of the Keystone Cops, Byte magazine finally has moved into separate offices of its own."[13]
Green was not happy about losing Byte and decided to start a new magazine called Kilobyte. He announced these intentions early, and advertised the upcoming magazine in 73, with the goal of shipping the first issue in December 1976 (the January 1977 edition).[14] Byte quickly took out a trademark on "KILOBYTE" as the name for a cartoon series in Byte magazine, and threatened to sue for trademark violations. This forced Green to change the name of the new magazine to Kilobaud. There was competition and animosity between Byte Publications and 73 Inc. but both remained in the small town of Peterborough, New Hampshire.