I released 256 Bytes on November 13, 1999. The design came directly from the logo of the MITS Altair 8800, one of the first personal computers, introduced in 1975. The logo itself only provided a few letters, so most of the typeface was extrapolated from those forms.

The name refers to the starter memory boards in the Altair, which shipped with just 256 bytes of RAM installed, even though they could support up to 1024 bytes.

Like many of my early releases, 256 Bytes was offered with a free commercial-use desktop license. On June 4, 2021, I updated it, cleaning up curves, fixing kerning classes, and making other technical refinements. In April 2024, I released it into the public domain. To my knowledge, it hasn’t been used in any particularly notable contexts, but it remains a small record of early computer typography adapted into a late-1990s digital font.