Magazine Articles

Windows Tech Journal

Windows Tech Journal published a number of Kyle's articles. From September 1992 through August 1997 his column "In The APIary" was a feature of every issue. The intent of the column was to ease the transition that experienced software developers suffer when moving from MS-DOS to the Windows platforms. It also featured a "Book Buzz" section that suggested one book, not always technical and not always current, that Kyle found interesting enough to recommend.

Starting with the September 1997 issue Kyle became "editor at large" and the column was replaced by a charter to become a commentator on industry history and trends.

In December of 1996 the original publishing company sold its magazines to a larger firm, PennWell Publishing Co. Almost exactly one year later, in mid-December 1997, PennWell shut down all the magazines without notice and discharged the staff.

Click here to locate code from some of the Apiary columns.

VB Tech Journal

VB Tech Journal, published by the same firm that published WinTech, had a Kyle byline in almost every issue, but not all of them are from Jim Kyle. His youngest son, Tony, also appeared there.

The elder Kyle's articles in VB Tech provided background and discussed good programming practices, to help fill gaps in the typical reader's formal training. He does frequent software reviews and comparisons, also.

Like WinTech, VB Tech died unexpectedly on December 17, 1997.

Click here to locate code from some of his articles.

Btrieve Developer's Journal

While doing research for the book "Btrieve Complete" Kyle became acquainted with Scott Smith and Steve Mook of Smithware, the publisher of BDJ. When the book appeared, they asked him to do a background article to accompany their review. They liked it enough to offer him the position of News Editor for the Journal, which he held from mid-1995 to early 1997.

Pervasive Software Developer's Journal

Effective with the Autumn, 1998, issue, BDJ's name and ownership changed to become PSDJ instead. Kyle remained a frequent contributor to the magazine until it ceased publication in mid-1999.

Click here to locate code from some of his articles.

Computer Language Magazine

Computer Language Magazine appeared on the scene in 1985, founded by two Dr. Dobb's Journal veterans. During its 7-1/2 years the magazine attracted a loyal following. CLM ceased publication with its June 1993 issue and was replaced in the Miller-Freeman lineup by Software Development Magazine. Kyle wrote a number of feature articles and several software reviews for CLM.

PC Techniques

PC Techniques (later known as Visual Developer magazine) was founded by The Coriolis Group (headed by Jeff Duntemann and Keith Weiskampf) in 1990 and featured hands-on coding techniques, concentrating on use of the Turbo Pascal language. Kyle has written one feature and several "HAX" items for PCT. The magazine ceased publication early in 2000.

Dr. Dobb's Journal

Dr. Dobb's Journal is the oldest surviving code-oriented periodical. Kyle has appeared in its pages once, with a description of the DEVLOD utility from the first edition of Undocumented DOS. It appeared in the November 1991 issue.

Other Magazine Appearances:

This listing is necessarily incomplete; I didn't keep copies of everything from those years, so only a few highlights appear.

Minicam Photography

Kyle's original interest in journalism involved a camera rather than a keyboard. His initial national publication, in the March 1949 issue of Minicam Photography, described what later came to be known as "push processing" to increase the effective speed of film. However the editors requested better photographs; Kyle took the hint and thereafter concentrated on writing! (The photos with the article were supplied by the late Bob East, at the time a staff photographer for The Daily Oklahoman, who made national news in 1994 when he was the victim of an operating-room error that killed him.)

"It's Never Too Dark" appeared when Kyle was a freshman at the University of Oklahoma. Another article of his, in the same issue, told how to make your own infra-red flashbulbs by coating ordinary bulbs with a dye mixture.

Mechanix Illustrated

Kyle continued to be interested in the use of infra-red flash, and the next year sold an article to Mechanix Illustrated describing how to build a filter to attach to a flashgun so that ordinary bulbs could be used without dipping. Photos for this one, including one of Kyle, were made by Floyd Bright.

Sport

The OU Sooners football team first gained national prominence while Kyle was a student at the university. One of his first non-technical magazine articles (and there have been very few) was a biographical study of the legendary coach Bud Wilkinson that appeared in Sport magazine. It was the first of many articles on Wilkinson that appeared at that time, and by far the friendliest toward the late coach.

CQ

Military service from 1952 to 1954 temporarily halted Kyle's writing efforts, and it was 1958 before he seriously resumed them. By then he had taken up ham radio. His first sale was to the ham journal "CQ" and came about because that magazine's editor shared Kyle's warped sense of humor and love of puns. Several more serious pieces followed during early 1959.

Popular Electronics

Success at CQ impelled Kyle to explore the general-interest electronics magazines also, and he sold a short article to Popular Electronics which appeared in mid-1959. This article and those in CQ made up for lack of formal electronics training, and qualified Kyle for an interview with RCA Service Company as a potential tech writer. In late 1959, he moved to California to help write manuals on the Atlas missile project.

A discussion with another RCAS writer led him to build a hi-fi speaker consisting of 16 inexpensive PM speakers, and that project appeared in the January 1961 issue of Popular Electronics as the "Sweet Sixteen." Readers built several thousand copies of it, and Kyle was still receiving mail about it more than 15 years later.

73 Magazine

The editor who had liked Kyle's work at CQ left that publisher in 1960 to start his own magazine. Kyle heard about it via the west coast ham grapevine and wrote to ask if there was any possible market. At the same time, the editor (Wayne Green, W2NSD, who later founded Byte) wrote to ask Kyle if he had any interest in writing for the new venture. The letters crossed in the mail.

The interest was there, and nearly half the content of the first 12 issues of 73 Magazine came from Kyle's typewriter. By the time Kyle moved back to Oklahoma City in 1962, 73 was well established and his appearances became less frequent. However they continued until 1975, on a sporadic basis, even though Kyle quit ham radio in 1967.

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