Byte explicitly denotes a sequence of eight bits, eliminating the ambiguity of the byte. The term "byte" was coined by Werner Buchholz in June 1956, during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer, which had addressing to the bit and variable field length (VFL) instructions with a byte size encoded in the instruction. It is a deliberate respelling of "bite" to avoid accidental mutation to "bit". Another origin of "byte" for bit groups smaller than a machine's word size (and in particular groups of four bits) is on record by Louis G. Dooley, who claimed he coined the term
Type-in program such as "Byte" and "Popular Computing" printed them less frequently, often as a test program to illustrate a technical topic covered in the magazine rather than an application for general use. Consumer-oriented publications such as "Compute!" and "Family Computing" ran several each issue. The programs were sometimes specific to a given home computer and sometimes compatible with several computers. Entirely platform-specific magazines such as "Compute!'s Gazette" (Commodore) and "Antic" (Atari), since they only had to print one version of each program, were able to print more, longer listings. Although type in programs were usually copyrighted, like the many games in