Stewart Cheifet, Computer Chronicles Host, Dies At 87

Pibroch(CiH) writes: According to the obituary linked, Stewart Cheifet of Computer Chronicles fame has died. The obituary states he passed Dec 28, 2025. Cheifet and Digital Research founder Gary Kildall hosted the public television show The Computer Chronicles starting in 1984, and Stewart continued to host the show well into the 1990s. He was well-known for his affable presence and adeptness at interviewing guests and finding out the straight dope about their products. He had recently undergone spinal surgery and had somewhat disappeared from public view after the death of his wife Peta in 2024.

RIP

[RitchCraft]

I never missed an episode of Computer Chronicles when it aired. Every computer enthusiast in the world knows who this man is. He will be remembered fondly. RIP Mr. Cheifet.

Memory lanes (8bit)

[Ostracus]

A who's who of computing ran through that show. We have come far.

Another key person in computing history is gone.

[Nabeel_co]

This is super sad, yet another great in the early computing industry is gone.

We're going to be losing more and more of these people as time goes buy and our industry gets older.

What a gem!

[Yo,dog!]

Ahead of the times, Stewart Cheifet made the business of microcomputing normal. His shows were eclectic and informative. And College of San Mateo's TV station was the place to be!

Re:

[tlhIngan]

He also brought computing through various generations, from the 80s 8-bit micros to the rise of the IBM PC and the 386 and Windows, to Windows 95, to the early Internet era.

It's worth a watch just to see how things evolved over the 20 plus years it was on the air. You can tell how computing became democratized from the formal 80s where the hosts wore full suits to the 90s where things got more casual (still a shirt, maybe a tie) and such.

The show evolved and kept up during a period of unprecedented growth i

Truly a shame

[Rujiel]

He was a great one. Even today, Computer Chronicles is great for background listening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

YouTube Computer Chronicles is stolen from archive

[blahbooboo]

The YouTube episodes were stolen from Cheifet posting them to archive.org.

Re:

[Jason Scott]

People mirror things off the Archive all the time. This show is explicitly open-licensed.

Re: YouTube Computer Chronicles is stolen from arc

[paul_engr]

Oh no! Go fuck yourself, idiot. We all benefit from having them.

Re:

[antdude]

https://www.youtube.com/@Compu... [youtube.com] for the whole channel. I watched the episodes on my local PBS station back in the rad 80s. I always loved the gaming episodes. ;)

I missed when CC went off the air

[sinkskinkshrieks]

It was something I looked forward to, and it was on PBS and they didn't sell out.

Re:

[RitchCraft]

God I hope not.

Re:

[freeze128]

I rewatched an episode recently, and the credits say that he created the Computer Chronicles, as well as hosted them. He maybe even wrote the scripts, but when interviewing a guest, he would often ask the silliest follow-up questions. Perhaps this was just part of his charm.

Either way, I can agree that the show was informative, and there really wasn't anything else like it on the TV at the time.

Archive of computer history

[xack]

Being a younger millennial from outside America I never seen it in its heyday but I've seen the episodes on Youtube and it showed me a Window to the world before Windows and the Internet took over.

Stewart was Fabulous!

[brewsterkahle]

Met him getting interviewed for Netcafe https://archive.org/details/tm... [archive.org] and after it I asked what he was doing with his archive, we kept talking and he founded the "collections group" at the Internet Archive and helped us get all of Computer Chronicles on this new site and so much more. Wonderful man, and oh that voice!

Re:

[jayrtfm]

Thanks to a call out from Jason Scott I volunteered to move his tapes from his garage to the IA warehouse. Appreciated the opportunity to thank him in person for the show.

Re:

[Yo,dog!]

Thank you, Brewster, for all you've done with the Internet Archive!

$4000 a terabyte!

[blahbooboo]

$4000 a terabyte! Forgot how expensive a 1tb spinning disk was back in 2001!