RadioShack
More info
- Type
- Electronics retailer
- Released
- 1921
- Owner
- Tandy Corporation (1963–2000)
The electronics chain with drawers full of resistors and cables that once sold one of the first home computers.
Founded in 1921 in Boston by brothers Theodore and Milton Deutschmann as a mail-order and retail outfit for ham-radio hobbyists and ship's telegraph operators — a "radio shack" being the cabin that housed a vessel's wireless gear. Charles Tandy bought the near-bankrupt chain in 1963 and grew it into thousands of stores.
In 1977 it launched the TRS-80, one of the three home computers that turned the personal computer into a consumer product that year. For decades the chain was where you went for a soldering iron, a resistor or a serial cable at nine on a Sunday. Online retail ate that business, and the company filed for bankruptcy in 2015.