Tandy Corporation | Code Like It's 198x

Tandy sold its first computer the way it sold radio parts: over the counter, in thousands of its own shops. In 1976, 80 Micro later recounted, the company was looking for something to fill the gap left by the collapse of the CB radio boom, and some of its engineers had been ordering kit computers. Tandy decided against a kit, which would have needed long instruction manuals and created “nightmares” for its service department. It would sell “a totally assembled microcomputer, complete with keyboard, monitor, processor, memory, and a programming language”. The result, the TRS-80, was announced in August 1977 at $599.95 and sold through Radio Shack. The company behind it had started 59 years earlier, selling shoe leather to Texas cobblers.

Fast facts

Founded: 1918, Texas, as Hinckley-Tandy Leather; later Tandy Corporation of Fort Worth.
Radio Shack: a Boston chain of nine shops, taken over between 1962 and 1965.
Computers: TRS-80 (1977) and its Z80 successors; Color Computer (1980–1991); the Tandy 1000 (1984) and other MS-DOS machines.
Left computer manufacturing: May 1993, selling its factories to AST Research.
Renamed: RadioShack Corporation, May 2000.

Leather to electronics

In 1918 Dave Tandy and Norton Hinckley bought a stock of shoe leather and repair supplies and sold it to cobblers across Texas as Hinckley-Tandy Leather. Dave’s son Charles noticed during the Second World War how many servicemen took up leatherwork as a hobby, and after the war he opened shops selling leather-craft supplies, backed by mail order. In 1950 the Tandys and Hinckley split the business, the Tandys keeping the craft side. By 1961, 80 Microcomputing reported in its first issue, the company ran 125 shops in 105 American cities.

In 1962 Radio Shack was a small, struggling electronics business in Boston: nine shops and a mail-order operation, selling mostly to radio amateurs. Charles Tandy took control of it in 1963 and owned 85 per cent by June 1965. He cut its stock from 4,000 items to 2,500, and within two years had turned a $4 million loss into a profit. By fiscal 1978 there were 7,000 Radio Shack outlets, 5,200 of them in the United States, and new ones were opening at two a day. Charles Tandy ran the company until his death in 1978.

The TRS-80

80 Micro’s tenth-anniversary history describes how Tandy came to build a computer. John Roach, a Tandy executive with a background in data processing, noticed the company’s engineers enthusing over the Altair. A group led by Don French recruited Steve Leininger, a chip designer at National Semiconductor and a member of the Homebrew Computer Club, and he arrived in Fort Worth in 1976. He was first told to design a computer that could sell for under $200. Nobody at Tandy was sure there was a market; the president of Radio Shack, Lewis Kornfeld, had an office with “a permanently waterlogged rug from a leaky ceiling”.

The TRS-80 sold quickly: a Radio Shack executive told BYTE that 370,000 had been made by March 1980. Tandy followed it with the Model II for business and the Model III, and in 1980 with a completely different machine, the 6809-based Color Computer. In January 1985 80 Micro reported figures from Hewlett-Packard placing Tandy fourth in the desktop and portable computer market, with 5.2 per cent.

Tandy and its own users

Selling through its own shops gave Tandy reach, and it also gave it control, which many enthusiasts resented. In August 1982 Dennis Kitsz, a contributing editor of the independent magazine 80 Micro, used his column to argue that “the Shack — a relative latecomer to digital equipment — isn’t the only font of hardware and software wisdom”. He complained of “Tandy Tower’s suggestions that non-Shack peripherals, upgrades, modifications, and enhancements” would damage users’ machines, and of “the distinct information vacuum maintained by Radio Shack about its plans”. He was fairer to individuals: Tandy’s vice-president of computer marketing, Jon Shirley, had been “open and helpful” on the phone. Advertisers in the magazine’s pages printed the line that “TRS-80 is a trademark of Tandy Radio Shack Corporation which has no relationship to” them.

Kitsz was also answering a fear about the Color Computer. 80 Micro‘s publisher, Wayne Green, had suggested that Tandy might drop the machine. Kitsz granted that “eventually, that’s inevitable”, but pointed to stores whose walls were “covered with Color Computer software — most of it far more sophisticated than what was available for the Model I at an equivalent stage of its existence”, and to Radio Shack’s working disk interface. If Radio Shack dropped it, perhaps to make room for its new 16-bit machine, “it isn’t because the user base was missing”. In the same column he reported that 68 per cent of the nearly 500 replies to his readers’ survey came from Color Computer owners. Tandy in fact kept the Color Computer for nine more years, until 1991.

PC compatibles and after

Tandy’s first MS-DOS computer was the Tandy 2000, and in November 1984 it moved its mainstream home and office line to MS-DOS with the Tandy 1000. The 1000, priced at $1,199 in 80 Micro’s review, was designed by Tandy’s own engineers and built in Fort Worth; Tandy said it had “a high level of software compatibility with the IBM PC, but it’s not a clone”. 80 Micro’s reviewer found it slower than the IBM PC in some tests, but concluded that it was “still a computer of choice”.

In May 1993 Tandy sold its computer manufacturing to its rival AST “for an undisclosed sum”, as The World of 68’ Micros reported, and from then on sold computers made by others; two years later the TRS-80 owners’ magazine TRSTimes noted that Radio Shack was selling AST computers “made in the ex-Tandy factory”. In May 2000 Tandy’s shareholders voted to rename the company RadioShack Corporation, after the chain it had bought nearly 40 years earlier. RadioShack filed for bankruptcy in February 2015.

Sources

Chris Brown, “The Tandy Story”, 80 Microcomputing issue 1, January 1980, pp. 28–29: Dave Tandy and Norton Hinckley in 1918; Charles Tandy’s leather-craft shops and mail order; the 1950 split; 125 shops in 1961; Radio Shack in 1962 and its takeover by 1965; the stock cut from 4,000 to 2,500 items; the $4 million loss turned to profit; 7,000 outlets in fiscal 1978.
Ron White, “It all started 10 years ago in a converted used-car showroom…”, 80 Micro, August 1987, pp. 51–53: the CB slump and the Altair; John Roach; Don French and Steve Leininger; the assembled computer and the reasons against a kit; the under-$200 brief; Lewis Kornfeld’s office; the 1918 founding.
80 Micro, September 1982, editorial: Charles Tandy ran the company until 1978.
BYTE, vol. 5 no. 6, June 1980, p. 176, “BYTE News”: 370,000 TRS-80s manufactured by 1 March 1980 (see TRS-80).
Dennis Kitsz, “80 Applications”, 80 Micro, August 1982, pp. 348–352: “Misinformation and Silliness”; Wayne Green and the Color Computer; Jon Shirley; Tandy Tower; the reader survey.
80 Micro, August 1982, p. 3: Percom Data Company advertisement with the Tandy trademark disclaimer.
80 Micro, January 1985, p. 24: Hewlett-Packard’s market figures, Tandy fourth with 5.2 per cent.
80 Micro, March 1985, p. 128, “Ask Tandy”: the Tandy 2000 as Tandy’s first MS-DOS computer; the Tandy 1000 designed by Tandy engineers and built in Fort Worth, “not a clone”.
80 Micro, April 1985, pp. 51–52: Tandy 1000 review (introduced the previous November; $1,199; “still a computer of choice”).
The World of 68’ Micros, vol. 1 no. 1, August 1993, p. 24: “On 26 May 1993, it was reported that Tandy sold their computer manufacturing facilities to rival AST for an undisclosed sum.” TRSTimes, vol. 8 no. 4, July 1995, p. 18: Radio Shack selling AST computers “made in the ex-Tandy factory”.
RadioShack Corporation, Form 8-K, May 2000 (SEC filing): the shareholders’ vote of 18 May 2000 to change the name. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000096289/000095013400004880/0000950134-00-004880.txt
“RadioShack files for bankruptcy”, PCWorld, 5 February 2015 (web, secondary). https://www.pcworld.com/article/2880755/radioshack-files-for-bankruptcy.html
F. G. Swygert, Tandy’s Little Wonder: The Color Computer 1979–1991 (FARNA Systems, 1993): the Color Computer’s last catalogue appearance in 1991 (see TRS-80 Color Computer).