It is time for the truth to come out. The world is full of uncredited ghost writers (such as Tom Koch, who wrote most of Bob and Ray’s long-form material), and I finally decided to come clean.

I am the only person alive who would know it, but Richard Dalton  co-wrote nearly all of the 133 reviews I delivered on Computer Chronicles between 1983 and 1992. I wrote some reviews on my own, for software I used personally, such as XyWrite and dBASE (which required me to install my first copy of Windows 2 and my first mouse). 

But throughout my run, I had full-time jobs at CMP Publishing, which did not involve personal computers until I joined Windows Magazine in 1991 (my last year). Dalton, on the other hand, was the former editor of Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Software Catalog, and had a weekly subscriber  newsletter called Keep-Track, for which I briefly worked in 1988. He followed software closely, and picked the software we would review. We would look at software together. I took notes and wrote the scripts, which I then presented (adding the shtick myself). During the nine-year run, I credited Dalton on the air only a few times. He said he was fine without the credit, but we split the (small) payment I received for each episode.

We were friends for 20 years, until he moved to Falmouth, Mass. During those two decades in San Francisco, we have lunch together weekly, and shot a handful of the reviews at his house. Even though he was 76 when he died, it was too soon.

I was the Chronicles‘ weatherman.