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Byte magazine artist Robert Tinney, who illustrated the birth of PCs, dies at 78
- cmrdporcupine 9mo agoWhen I was 10 years old in elementary school in rural Alberta, Canada in the early 80s this man's art (along with stacks of older Byte magazines that the librarian gifted me) were a gateway to another world. RIP. Thanks for all the amazing imaginations and for being part of setting me on this career.
- sombragris 9mo agoI clearly remember his covers and being inspired and stimulated by them. RIP Mr. Tinney, thanks for your great art.
- forinti 9mo agoMagazine and game covers had such cool art then. It's still a joy to look at them after so many years. RIP Mr Tinney.
- throw0101a 9mo agoVarious archives: * https://archive.org/details/BYTE-MAGAZINE-COMPLETE/197509_Byte_Magazine_Vol_00-01_The_Worlds_Greatest_Toy/ https://archive.org/details/BYTE-MAGAZINE-COMPLETE/197509_By... * https://archive.org/download/BYTE-MAGAZINE-COMPLETE https://archive.org/download/BYTE-MAGAZINE-COMPLETE * https://vintageapple.org/byte/ https://vintageapple.org/byte/ * https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Byte_Magazine.htm https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Byte_Magazine.htm * 5mo ago, "Show HN: A zoomable, searchable archive of BYTE magazine": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45028002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45028002 Had a subscription to it in the 1990s. Probably one of the best computing magazines that existed (it covered all sorts of topics, from CPU cache workings to file systems (like Veritas)).
- muyuu 9mo agowonderful stuff I have a bunch of the old ones from my late father, I have sunk thousands of hours in old computer magazines, there's something special to them that the new world cannot capture anymore.
- xattt 9mo agoIt was the accessibility. You were learning computing concepts from scratch, that would then increase in complexity in real-time as your learning caught up if you were actively engaged.
- muyuu 9mo agoalso the importance and the degree of care that was put into things that were published, and what all the constraints meant also in computing itself there were strong positives to that, and they just cannot be replicated in a society of hyper-abundance and slop
- rbanffy 9mo agoIt was an amazing magazine, one we still need to this day. I still subscribe to a couple magazines, IEEE's Computer, Micro, and Spectrum, and Communications of the ACM, on paper, and IEEE's Software on PDF, but none covers the breadth and depth of BYTE. I still feel a bit like an orphan.
- timthorn 9mo agoI bought myself a 3 year subscription with my very first pay cheque. I got 2 or 3 issues before it went under. As a way of teaching a teenager about the full range of computer technology from the Cambridge Active Badge through to Big Data, it was and is unmatched.
- rbanffy 9mo agoThat was a very sad day, not only for your cheque.
- rgacote 9mo agoRobert's cover art set the tone for each issue. His covers danced a fine line between whimsical and informative.
- ChrisArchitect 9mo ago[dupe] Earlier on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46982354 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46982354
- mrspuratic 9mo ago[dupe^2], previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46897340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46897340
- nrp 9mo agoAs recently as a few years ago, Robert was directly answering emails and shipping out signed prints of his BYTE covers. We have had some hanging in our office for inspiration. He set the best tone for what computing feels like.
- jacquesm 9mo agoFelt. Not feels. Now it is turning into a sausage factory.
- rbanffy 9mo agoThere are still bright spots, but the space is so much larger it’s hard to find them. I still love all the companies that present at SC and Hot Chips. One I like in particular is Cerebras. Wafer scale didn’t work when wafers were 3” but, somehow, they managed to make it work when they are the size of a manhole cover. BYTE would run entire issues on the exploits of IBM in POWER and Z, on Intel and AMD’s latest tricks, and on the latest 250TB 2.5” SSDs.
- jacquesm 9mo agoYes, Cerebras is very cool. But that sort of thing is also becoming the exception. I use the homepage of HN as a sort of thermometer, the trend seems to be towards 'more' rather than 'better'.
- rbanffy 9mo agoSame here. HN is an excellent way to take the pulse of our industry. This "more over better" is a natural trend - a lot of money can be made for a relatively low effort. Cerebras did the Really Hard Thing, something many other brilliant companies and people failed at for decades. I remember Gene Amdahl failing at wafer-scale back when wafers were tiny.
- jacquesm 9mo agoFor a long time Byte magazine was my only window on computing (I didn't have a computer yet because they were too expensive) and I always loved the covers. Same with Scientific American. So much effort went into these and they always hit the mark.
- taolson 9mo agoThe logo for Smalltalk-80, and later Squeak, came from the Robert Tinney cover of the Byte issue which introduced Smalltalk. The story behind it is documented here: https://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/3459 https://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/3459
- jeffwass 9mo agoSome of Robert Tinney's artwork is still available for sale at his website, limited edition runs of several of the Byte covers and other art. https://tinney.net/ https://tinney.net/
- azinman2 9mo agoAmazing. I just ordered some. I hope someone fulfills it?!
- cpr 9mo agoHelped Carl Helmers start Byte along with another Intermetrics co-worker Dan Fylstra (who founded VisiCorp a bit later, the first PC software company that published VisiCalc) in the summer between semesters at Harvard. Wrote a couple of articles and spent some time in Nashua (IIRC) with Helmers and Green (the publisher), but had to get back to school in the fall so faded out, and didn't overlap with Tinney's work. Fun times.