He became one of the first to visualize personal computing by painting vivid cover art.
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Byte magazine artist Robert Tinney, who illustrated the birth of PCs, dies at 78
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As a massive fan of New Yorker and Omni covers, I'm saddened that I missed out on seeing these covers at the time. By timely coincidence I have a youngling expressing interest in getting started with airbrushing. I'll be pointing her in this direction..
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I regret that I had to discard all of mine at the last minute during a house move, when they literally would not fit on the van. If I could just tip off my younger self to cut off the front covers, I'd have some great display pieces now!
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I started a subscription just as it died. Wonderful and engaging covers were an absolute draw. RIP to a great publication (I try to stay topical) and a great illustrator.
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A well written article about a very interesting man. I very much enjoyed reading it. Thank you, Mr. Edwards, for composing it.
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Me too. His paintings were not only well done, they were often somewhat quirky or whimsical, softening the hard technology. I liked them. RIP and thanks for all the artwork...
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Byte stopped commissioning Tinney’s cover art around 1987, opting for product photographs as competition in the computer magazine market intensified.
It was probably a smart business move but the magazine was visibly diminished after they made this change. If you have the opportunity to flip through some old issues, it is a night and day difference.
It was probably a smart business move but the magazine was visibly diminished after they made this change. If you have the opportunity to flip through some old issues, it is a night and day difference.
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I am the son of a subscriber, and grew up with Byte and a Commodore 64 to fuel my imagination. Given Benj's usual focus, this was a welcome celebration of someone who offered a wonderful backdrop to the pioneering era of home computing.
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The Forth/TIL issue was background for me when I used the HP-71B Forth/Assembler manual (I had the module because of my interest in Forth) to write the first unthreader (?) for the HP-48SX ROM, leading eventually (I think) to HP releasing their internal development tools.
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I was the technical editor at Wayne Green Books and Kilobaud magazine in the 80s. We scored Robert to do a book cover for us and were so very proud of it. The book itself went on to be a less-than-bestseller. 
He humanized technology and I'm pleased to see his talent celebrated here.
He humanized technology and I'm pleased to see his talent celebrated here.
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Growing up in the 70's and 80's Byte was your go-to resource for all things computing. Always loved the cover art, as if it was the gateway to some magical land. Rest in peace!
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I always loved his art and looked forward to seeing the next issue at the base library at Aviano, Italy. I also used to pick up the Computer Shopper at the base news stand. That was when it was only a 1/4 in thick and printed on newsprint.
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I was horribly offended when the manufacturers decided to replace the Centronics interface with a 25 pin RS-232C type one. How times change.
And Byte was a wonderful magazine, memorable covers, excellent articles (remember 'Circuit Cellar'?) and the hours of perusing those hundreds of pages of ads...
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A sad passing. His illustrations are what first enticed me to crack the magazine open. Imaginative if not wondrous images. I remember a few quite well, notably the Piracy cover...
I learned far more about how computers, compilers, languages and sundries work in the pages of Byte than from any other source. For a teen in a small Quebec town sneaking into the computer lab of his college (about 10 TRS-80s Model I) to understand what makes these newfangled things tick, it was a godsend.
I learned far more about how computers, compilers, languages and sundries work in the pages of Byte than from any other source. For a teen in a small Quebec town sneaking into the computer lab of his college (about 10 TRS-80s Model I) to understand what makes these newfangled things tick, it was a godsend.
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I think you mean "next month's phone book".
And even then only if you buy it just before it leaves the newsstands!
The post-dating of computer magazines so that August's comes out in mid-June was always a source of amusement to me. Yes, I get it, you're covering the future. But it confused the heck out of my friends that I was waiting for a big story in September's magazine, which I'd buy in July, and would cover something that you could actually buy in November at the earliest.
Dates are notoriously hard for developers to handle. And apparently also for computer magazine publishers...
Post-dating magazines is standard practice for the entire publishing industry, not just computers.
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RIP
So many happy memories of reading Byte as a youngster. I'd have to take a bus trip in to my local large town to find the only newsagent that carried it on the shelves, then be gutted to find out that the next edition wasn't out until the following week
But I learned so much! (including how calendars work)
So many happy memories of reading Byte as a youngster. I'd have to take a bus trip in to my local large town to find the only newsagent that carried it on the shelves, then be gutted to find out that the next edition wasn't out until the following week
But I learned so much! (including how calendars work)
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I vividly remember the Smalltalk cover like it was yesterday, for some reason it really stuck with me all these years. I remember almost spending more time reading the ads for S100 bus cards that did all sorts of amazing things than the articles themselves.
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Thanks for this obit! I went off to tinney.net and bought yet another of his great covers - "Chip Building". Byte was the best of the PC magazines!
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And thus we seque into Computer Shopper.
My copy was sent to my workplace and I was about the last person to actually see it.
My how times have changed.
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It is hard for me to describe the impact Robert Tinney had, but for me his art was a differentiator for Byte magazine. Back when the industry (and hobby) of computers still had much humanity. I still get a kick out of the covers when pulling out one of my back issues of Byte, which still hold a visible place on my bookshelves in my office.
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I have to confess that I remember the covers but back then when I was reading the magazine, I wasn't thinking about the artist. We should never take art for granted. Now I can admire the creativity and the human touch that Tinney brought to personal computing. May he be long remembered.
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I think it is a legacy of postal systems. Magazines were posted around the world to subscribers which could take 2 to 3 weeks and I suspect many complaints would be received if June arrived in July. So they called it July, printed and posted in June and those that got them locally via rapid shippers to newsagents were "lucky"
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I have a copy of that one too! I've decided that he based Newton's look on a young Steve Jobs, and nothing will convince me otherwise. Between the obvious connection of Newton/Jobs sitting under an Apple tree and the pun of symbols on the fruit referencing the APL language, I think it's right in Tinney's funny/punny wheelhouse...
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I grew up in Ireland and got my first "PC" (a ZX81) around 83. BYTE was super-expensive as it was imported from the US, and as a 15-year old I didn't have much disposable income, but I was consumed in no time. Compared to the games focus of most UK publications, it felt serious and academic. LOVED that magazine.
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Also the equipment prices for "real" systems available in the US at the time were staggering to me; $15K? That was a decent junior annual salary in Ireland back then
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Most of the editors at the time felt the same. In trying to make the magazine more appealing to advertisers, BYTE lost some of what made it special.
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It's from newsstands. The cover date was the date they could be removed from sale and returned if not sold.
This prevented newsstands from immediately returning copies to cover up cash flow issues.
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Great magazine in the late seventies. I tried to build everything Steve Ciarcia wrote up. He was visiting the shop I worked for in my teens in CT. I ran into him in the restroom. I was in awe to meet him. He was just “finishing up” and I held out my hand before he washed. He hesitated and shook my hand. One of those dumb kid moments. 
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Great magazine in the late seventies. I tried to build everything Steve Ciarcia wrote up. He was visiting the shop I worked for in my teens in CT. I ran into him in the restroom. I was in awe to meet him. He was just “finishing up” and I held out my hand before he washed. He hesitated and shook my hand. One of those dumb kid moments.
Thanks for mentioning Steve Ciarcia. I loved his BYTE columns, which were the real nitty gritty of "small systems journalism", and even built some projects, some of which worked despite my handiwork
.I searched to see where he is now (recently sold his HW mag/biz to an employee), and stumbled across Ciarcia's "Are you wondering how it all began?" origin story he originally published in 2013. It was very interesting to learn that his Circuit Cellar magazine was really BYTE v2.0, launched with BYTE's publisher, circulation manager, financial controller, lead columnist, support team, and national advertising representatives... and Robert Tinney making the cover art. McGraw-Hill had bowdlerized BYTE into a foregettable office PC magazine, but Ciarcia kept it all going, including bringing Tinney's vision of "small systems" into the 1990s. Ciarcia always seemed like the ghost in the BYTE machine (along with Jerry Pournelle, whose "Chaos Manor" column ran even to August 1998 after the magazine was kaput). I wish this Ars article memorializing Tinney had included his art's second act on the covers of Ciarcia's second stage of BYTE. Thanks for inspiring me to discover its history.
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