Byte Vol 1. No. 4, cover dated December 1975
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Categories | Computer magazines |
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Frequency | Monthly |
First issue | September 1975 |
Final issue | July 1998 |
Company | UBM |
Country | United States |
Based in | Peterborough, New Hampshire |
Language | English |
ISSN | 0360-5280 |
Byte magazine was an American microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage. Whereas many magazines from the mid-1980s had been dedicated to the MS-DOS (PC) platform or the Mac, mostly from a business or home 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. Print publication ceased in 1998 and online publication in 2013.
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.
In 1975 Wayne Green was the editor and publisher of 73 (an amateur radio magazine) and his ex-wife, Virginia Londner Green was the Business Manager of 73 Inc. In the August 1975 issue of 73 magazine Wayne's editorial column started with this item:
The response to computer-type articles in 73 has been so enthusiastic that we here in Peterborough got carried away. On May 25th we made a deal with the publisher of a small (400 circulation) computer hobby magazine to take over as editor of a new publication which would start in August ... Byte.
Carl Helmers published a series of six articles in 1974 that detailed the design and construction of his "Experimenter's Computer System", a personal computer based on the Intel 8008 microprocessor. In January 1975 this became the monthly ECS magazine with 400 subscribers. The last issue was published on May 12, 1975 and in June the subscribers were mailed a notice announcing Byte magazine. Carl wrote to another hobbyist newsletter, Micro-8 Computer User Group Newsletter, and described his new job as editor of Byte magazine.