Radio Shack, despite being gone for a number of years, is still in our cultural consciousness. But do you know Tandy? And did you ever wonder how a leather company that started in 1919 became, briefly, a computer giant? Or even an electronics retailer? [Abort Retry Fail] has the story in three parts, framed with their computers. Well, three parts so far. They are only up to the Tandy 1000.
At first, the company made parts for shoes. But after World War II, they found that catering to leather crafting hobbyists was lucrative. Within a few years, they’d opened stores across the country, making sure that the store managers owned 25% of their stores, even if it meant they had to borrow money from the home office to do so. Meanwhile, Radio Shack was in Boston selling to radio amateurs. By 1935, Radio Shack was a corporation. In 1954, they started selling “Realist” brand equipment, that we would come to know as Realistic.
In 1961, Tandy decided to branch out into other hobby markets, including radio hobbyists. But Radio Shack, dabbling in consumer credit, was sunk with $800,000 of uncollectable consumer credit.
In 1963, Tandy purchased the struggling Radio Shack for $300,000, which was a substantial amount of money in those days. Tandy immediately set about making Radio Shack profitable. Tandy would eventually split into three companies, spinning off its original leather and craft businesses.
Then came computers. If you are at all interested in the history of early computers, the TRS-80, or any of the other Radio Shack computers, you’ll enjoy the story. It wasn’t all smooth sailing. We can’t wait to read part four, although sadly, we know how the story ends.
We don’t just miss the Radio Shack computers. We loved P-Box kits. Yeah, we know someone bought the brand. But if you visit the site, you’ll see it just isn’t the same.
“Did you ever wonder how a leather company started in 1919, because, briefly, a computer giant?”
Did you mean “became”?
“But Tandy, the company behind Radio Shack for many years.”
Yes?
Yeah, there was some really bad editing done there. People have been flogged, and text has been reworked.
But the good news is, we know they aren’t letting AI write it, at least not without first editing it to add a few human mistakes. 😁
Sounds as likely as going from being a paper mill to mobile phone giant.
And that’s how you know Finland entered the chat. We’ve all heard the Nokia story a hundred thousand times. It’s getting as much sympathy as Rednex sobbing about only being remembered for Cotton Eye Joe. Let’s look at the future, shall we?
I miss that era. I regret being too young to actually have experienced it fully. If only I had been born 5-ish years earlier. On the flip side, I am oh so glad to not have been been born 5-ish years later.
I remember the computer center way in the back of the regular store. Professor having a model 16 with Xenix and a Winchester drive.
When the TRS-80 was first introduced in the 1970’s, there was not much in the way of peripherals. There was a connector on the back, but no documentation for it. My goal was to use it for data collection and control at the Fortune 500 company I worked for. I ended up contacting the guy at RS that had designed the TRS-80 (a mechanical engineer of I recall…). He was most happy to help and I ended up being one of the first people to ever interface a TRS-80 to custom hardware in a professional setting.
Back in the 1970s and 80s my UK small home town had at least three independent electronic component shops and a Tandy.
The racks of super expensive components, kits, gadgets and accessories were fabulous but the Tandy/Radio Shack catalogue was the absolute best.
It was never edited or reprinted for the UK, it was the full blown US version and it had an incredible range of stuff including HiFi, car accessories and all sorts that would never be seen n the UK, with the absolute pinnacle (for me at least), the Realistic range of CB equipment that, sadly, I never managed to persuade the store manager or staff to import for me (50/50 because they just couldn’t be bothered or because it was illegal to use in the UK and even when CB was made legal, it used FM with a completely different set of channel frequencies)
Yay! Yes, I remember that in my town! And staffed with people who understood what they were selling. That became maplin, the staff quality dropped, they started selling more IT/consumer electronics stuff, and so were undercut by curries, Dixon’s, et al, then by Amazon… and died. No loss by the time they died. But a shame we lost Tandy.
They were two very different experiences in my bit of the world, Tandy was salespeople, Maplin were the experts until they started expanding and the vulture capitalists got involved, it rapidly became obvious it was only a matter of time when they started moving to out of town barns, the original Manchester store was staffed by some great people who really knew their stuff but I think they were mostly UMIST or MCC students
My first computer was the Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer III. It had no monitor, so you had to connect it to a TV and came with a cassette player
One paragraph in and I had to quit reading because of a lack of editing.
What happened to Hackaday? I’m not a priggish prescriptivist grammar cop, but this article doesn’t appear to be proofread or fact-checked. RadioShack never went away. They just closed a lot of stores before the company itself sold the business to General Wireless. They’ve reopened some of the stores closed too. And they’re back under their own business. Unfortunately, they no longer operate in my town and also no longer sell components – but why pay so much for a capacitor when you can buy a whole plastic case of them for a little more on Amazon!
“but why pay so much for a capacitor when you can buy a whole plastic case of them for a little more on Amazon!”
Social interaction. No shipping costs, quick availability.
Back in the day: for talking to the guy selling those parts.
Sometimes these employees had a technical background.
Where I live (non-US, non-RadioShack) I’ve used to do that.
I took the tram, left at the station and down the street I walked into the electronic shop (a little one) and looked through the sortiment.
The two employees knew me by name I often told them what I liked to build.
Sometimes they had useful input on the matter,
sometimes they just told some short stories (anecdotes) about something.
The PCs at the counter (for the parts catalog) ran DOS applications, I think.
I recognized VGA text-mode, at least. That was less than 10 years ago, by the way.
Nowadays they’re heavily focusing on Arduino and Raspberry Pi parts.
The classic electronic components are still on sale, as well.
Though they’re not as often refilled as they used to.
Sadly where I live the only electronics store is run by artistic jerks and it has been like that for the last 20 years. I’d rather order from TME and have package delivered next day than deal with people who are so rude, they make people like EEVblog sound nice.
Hahaha, yeah, I gave up on that forum a few years ago because of the owner and some of his fans, my blood pressure and I don’t miss it at all
Tandy Leather is still in business.
Also, some Radio Shack stores are run by hams.
Got my introduction to programming on a TRS-80 back in 1978.
Having worked for Radio Shack in my 20’s, selling Tandy PCs in the 80’s, I can definitely say that those were exciting times. The PC was in its infancy and a lot of standards were not worked out yet. It sure made for some interesting problems with compatibility. Most things would work if you knew what you were doing, but some didn’t. What annoyed me was that Radio Shack/Tandy’s approach to some of the problems that users had trying to install aftermarket hardware was “We don’t support that configuration.” Often, users were left to their own devices, or they would have to rely on someone like me who was willing to take the chance for them and try to figure out their problem.
To me, aside from market considerations and all too high pricing, refusing to support after market hardware was part of the reason that Tandy didn’t succeed with their PC line. I know I lost a lot of sales to competitors over just that. If they hadn’t been so greedy and short sighted, there might still be Tandy PCs in some form or other. Of course, that assumes that RS didn’t go belly up.
Love reading historical accounts like this. Thanks for writing this up, Al.