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Oct 24, 2015

Welcome to a special interview-only episode of the Floppy Days Podcast.  For this show, we have an interview conducted by Kevin Savetz, interviewer-extraordinaire from the Antic Podcast.  Kevin conducted this interview 2 years ago.  Since the interviewee and topic are not Atari-related, but are very much vintage computer related, Kevin and I thought perhaps Floppy Days would be a good medium for publishing this interview.

Wayne Green, Computer Magazine Publisher

Wayne Green was founder of 73 magazine; Byte magazine; Kilobyte, which became Kilobaud, then Kilobaud Microcomputing; 80 Micro magazine for the TRS-80; Hot Coco for the TRS-80 Color Computer; Run for the Commodore 64, inCider magazine for the Apple II; and several other computer magazines.  

This interview took place over Skype on January 29, 2013, when I was doing research for a book about the very first personal computer magazines — Byte, Kilobyte, and Creative Computing. Although I've decided not to write the book, I am publishing the interviews that I did for them.

Wayne Green died on September 13, 2013, eight months after we did this interview.

Teaser quotes:

"Sharing is the big deal for me. When I find something fun, interesting, I have to share it."

"Steve Jobs ... I heard about the Apple computer so my wife and I stopped by to visit him. ... He took me out to the garage and showed it to me. He says, 'What do you think?' I said 'I think you've got a winner. There's a first computer conference is going to be in Atlantic City in two weeks. Be there.' He says 'Oh, I can't afford to fly.' I said, 'Take a bus. Be there.'"

"Amelia Earhart kept her plane at my dad's airport. ... I used to play in that when I was a kid. ... I'm one of the few people who knows exactly what happened to her."

Links:

Obituary:  http://www.arrl.org/news/ham-radio-publications-pioneer-visionary-iconoclast-wayne-green-w2nsd-sk

An article remembering Wayne: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2474900/windows-pcs/goodbye-wayne-green--and-thanks-for-the-memories.html

Wayne Green FBI file:  https://archive.org/details/Wanye_Green_FBI_FOIA_Request_Response

Kilobaud Microcomputing issues: https://archive.org/details/kilobaudmagazine


John Gordon
eight and a half years ago

WOW. Heck of an interview. Thanks for doing it in the first place and then for posting it. I searched out and bought Kilobaud at various stores in the early days, then 80 Micro, Hot Coco, and there was one for the 100 I think plus the business owners one he talked about. Parts of it reminded me of talks with my mom (she is also 90 right now).

My neighbor also had a Model I and one of us bought an Instant Software game about running a kingdom. Buy food for your serfs or buy land or buy protection? We'd play for hours. Even modified it a bit, but (as I remember it 30+ years later) when we read the BASIC source, all the variables were done using arrays.

Anyway, great interview and thanks.