Tandy Corporation
More info
- Owner
- Publicly traded (renamed RadioShack in 2000)
- Type
- Retailer and computer maker
A Fort Worth leather business that bought an electronics chain and suddenly had thousands of shops to sell home computers in.
Tandy sold leather and craft supplies until Charles Tandy bought the struggling RadioShack chain in 1963. The stores are what turned it into a computer company: the TRS-80 of 1977 didn't need dealers, because Tandy already owned three thousand of them.
As the market moved to PC compatibles, Tandy launched the Tandy 1000 in 1984 — a clone of IBM's flop, the PCjr, with better graphics and three-voice sound from the SN76489. Game studios added dedicated "Tandy graphics" support, and the machine outsold the original by a wide margin. Tandy sold off computer manufacturing in 1993, renamed itself RadioShack in 2000 and went bankrupt in 2015: an electronics chain that outlived the home computer but not the smartphone.