RIP Robert Tinney, the illustrator behind so many Byte magazines

I cannot tell you how profoundly sad this makes me. His illustrations for Byte grounded the geekiness of early micro-computing to a bedrock of humanity and wit. I have a reproduction of his December '77 "Star Trek" cover illustration.

When I went off to uni in the early 1990s I found that the library had a collection of Byte magazine going back to the late 70s (not quite to the very first) and up until well into the late 80s. They may have had more recent ones upstairs, but I used to go down into the stacks and read through all the old ones from the 8-bit era, Ciarcia'a Circuit Cellar being a particular favourite.

Even though by then many of the "Good Bits" were over ten years old it still seemed so fresh and exciting, and the cover artwork really made it all look very special.

The building is closed, all the old buildings (even the very new at the time one where I studied EE) are closed. The building where the library and physics classrooms were is now flats, and I expect all the magazines are long gone.

I hope someone took them for their own collection. I wish I had. I can still smell the paper.

Old-school Apple fans may recall that Nibble Magazine's covers were also illustrated by Tinney.