Robert Tinney (American, 1947–2026) Closing the Loop (BYTE cover, February 1979) — attribution under review, 1979
Lithograph, signed and framed
40.6 × 51.4 cm
Signed
Collection of Bre Pettis
PION.2025.010
Description
A robot gripper draws a human hand while a human hand draws the robot's engineering diagram — Escher's Drawing Hands rebuilt for the microcomputer age. The image is BYTE's February 1979 cover, "Closing the Loop," which the magazine itself credits to Ken Lodding, after M. C. Escher — not to Robert Tinney, under whose name this signed, numbered print (383/1000) was catalogued. The print's edition format matches Tinney Graphics' program, but no "Closing the Loop" print appears in Tinney's store past or present, and the previous record called it a "1985 Robotics cover" (the actual robotics cover was January 1986, and shows a robot hatching from an egg). The signature on the sheet is the referee: read it, and this record resolves to Tinney, Lodding, or neither.
Sources: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1979-02 · https://tinney.net/