This is what made Peterborough NH so interesting. There were always
rumours, intrigue, and personal tiffs. It is really a small town in a pretty
part of the world.

There was lots going on at the start of Byte and the truth part (as
opposed to fiction part) was that much of the initial magazine development
did happen in the 73 offices. Virginia was soon to be ex Mrs. Green.
It was her book. Carl Helmers (my old partner in NATI) was the editor
until the McGraw Hill sale with a financial interest (not a majority) in
Byte magazine. Carl's vision of a personal computing magazine was
a important part of Byte's success and direction.

Look at the masthead and public statement of ownership that is
published in a US magazine once a year, both are generally accurate.

Byte's first issue was an outstanding success and then fun begins. There
was Wayne's kilobyte (Kill Byte) and the Byte cartoon Kil'o'byte
(old issues are fun) seems the name kilobyte/kil'o'byte was not
registered to Wayne. This was bluntly pointed out just as the presses
finished the first print run. So kilobyte became kilobaud (byte and
baud have the same or close ps font value, beats re-laying out a whole
magazine) and Wayne made another trip to the printers.

For a magazine to be a magazine and not focussed advertising
(higher postal rates) it needs to keep the % of advertising below a
certain number. Byte had this problem with finding and processing
enough editorial material to keep the ads from sticking together.

Byte was a good magazine and internally quite well organized and
managed.

Wayne on his web site doesn't claim to have started Byte and he
makes a lot of claims for his accomplishments
http://www.secretstohealth.us/author.html

Wayne Green was a local color. There was always something going
on. His ham magazines fuelled his other projects. He did start several
computer based magazines, and a short lived computer store chain.
Eventually he sold his magazines to IDG in the early 80's.

Gord Willamson (check the mastheads) kept a blog on Wayne before
blogs were blogs. In a moment when his inhibitors were not firing
properly he published the blog as "SEE WAYNE RUN. RUN,
WAYNE, RUN " subtitled "an assessment of a candidacy"  This book
is a good entertaining read on a rainy weekend afternoon. It is close
to being a biased Wayne Green biography.  ISBN 0-945736-01-0

The seventies and eighties were fun :)

w..


> This is a long story...
> Byte was started by Wayne Green (yes the same who was also editor of
> 73 Magazine)
> To cut some episodes, a few months later the magazine was taken over
> by Carl Helmers and went great guns until Mac Graw Hill became the
> owner. From that point it was downhill all the way. It became just
> another magazine full of adds with a few reviews that you can now
> find free of charge on the internet.
> After that episode Byte was bought by CPM (or CMP ???) and just
> became rubbish and one day just disappeared. At that time I was still
> a "faithful" or more likely "foolish" subscriber and it took me the
> whole of one year to get my money back!
> After that there was a web edition, I do not know if it still exists
> or not but you can check "byte.com"
> Wayne said he was going to write the story, one day or another, but I
> do not know if he ever got round to it.
> At the latter part of the life of Byte favorites were Circuit Cellar
> and Chaos Manor.
> I still have the full collection in the attic.
>
> I started with Circuit Cellar from number one, and I must say that
> the spirit of the magazine remained the same from day one

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