Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
For the children of the 80s, last week’s reports that RadioShack had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and planned to close more than 1,700 stores hit close to home. However, without RadioShack, odds are that the technologically advanced world of today would not have been possible.
RadioShack was founded in 1921, when brothers Theodore and Milton Deutschmann opened a store by that name in Boston. Originally designed as a small retail and mail-order business that supplied ship radio equipment and “ham” radios, the company issued its first catalog in 1939 and opened the first audio showroom to feature speakers, amplifiers and more in 1947.
In the 1950s, RadioShack entered the high-fidelity business, according to the Associated Press. It started offering a device known as the “Audio Comparator,” which allowed the customers to mix and match components and speakers in the listening room. In 1963, it was acquired by the Tandy Corporation, a firm that started out as a leather dealer and repair shop supplier.
In 1977, the company started selling the product it is perhaps best known for, the TRS-80. Radio Shack states that the TRS-80 was “the first mass-marketed, fully assembled personal computer,” and that it featured a Level II BASIC operation system created by none other than Mr. Microsoft himself, Bill Gates. The $600 computer became a big hit, despite its limited capabilities.
David and Theresa Welsh, authors of Priming the Pump: How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution, point out that the TRS-80 was not the first microcomputer, but it was the first off-the-shelf computing system. The brainchild of Tandy Corporation’s Don French, the TRS-80 was “so successful it overwhelmingly exceeded even its most optimistic sales predictions.”
“Introduction of the TRS-80 meant, for the first time, anyone could experiment with software and affordably use word processing, spreadsheets, accounting, database and other kinds of software,” they added. Other models followed, but none enjoyed the success of the original, nor would they have the impact on the future of computing that the original TRS-80 had.
In recent years, the company had fallen on hard times, and last year, it made a last-ditch, Hail Mary attempt at a comeback by running a commercial during the Super Bowl. In the ad, a store clerk is shown speaking on the phone, saying that the 80s “want their store back.” Shortly thereafter, the RadioShack store was overrun by a plethora of icons from three decades ago, including the likes of Hulk Hogan, Alf, and Mary Lou Retton.
Unfortunately, what was meant as a way to revitalize the struggling company only served as evidence of what most people already knew – RadioShack’s glory days had come and gone. Now, as the company announces plans to sell up to 2,400 stores to its largest shareholder and files a motion to close the rest of its 4,000 U.S. stores, it truly feels like the end of an era.
Perhaps it was Fast Company’s Neal Ungerleider who summed it up best: “For young geeks and nerds in the 1980s, there was one undisputed truth: RadioShack was an awesome place. A store filled with computers, remote control toys, and gadgets of all sorts that seemed to magically have a location anywhere your family went shopping on the weekend? Sweet.”
“Now, as we sadly know, RadioShack is no more,” he added. “The company’s announcement on Thursday that they filed for bankruptcy and are winding down operations was widely expected… but that doesn’t make it hurt less.”
We dedicate this song to all those hurting out there. We’ll get through this.
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