What Happened to RadioShack? The Store in Every American Town

RadioShack: what happened to the store that was in every American town? On August 3, 1977, Radio Shack announced the TRS-80, a home computer for 399 dollars. Its own executives expected a few thousand sales a year. It sold more than 10,000 in six weeks and, by one 1980 estimate, three times as many computers as Apple. Walter goes back to where it began, a ham radio shop on Brattle Street in Boston in 1921, and the leather company that bought the nearly broke chain for 300,000 dollars in 1962. Then the mistake that cost RadioShack its computer lead by 1982: company stores that sold only their own products and wouldn't even mention anyone else's. The same habit followed the chain into the cell phone years, through Fix 1500 and The Shack, to bankruptcy in 2015 and again in 2017. And the name today belongs to a company that started as one of its franchisees. The TRS-80 ended up in the Smithsonian. Chapters 0:00 August 3, 1977: RadioShack Sells a Home Computer 2:30 Radio Shack Before the Computer: Boston 1921 to Charles Tandy 5:30 How Many TRS-80s Did RadioShack Sell? 8:10 When RadioShack Outsold Apple 10:40 The Trash-80 and the Store That Sold Only Its Own 13:20 From Computers to Cell Phones 16:00 Fix 1500 and The Shack 18:00 What Killed RadioShack, and Who Owns It Now 21:00 Is There Still a RadioShack Near You? 23:00 The TRS-80 in the Smithsonian ---------------------------------------------- Disclaimer : About this channel: Walter's Vanished America is an independent research production. Some narration is delivered with AI voice assistance and some illustrative imagery is AI-generated or creatively restored — all such material is disclosed via YouTube Studio's altered-or-synthetic-content checkbox. Historical figures, dates, and corporate timelines are researched from public records, trade journals, and viewer correspondence; dramatised passages are clearly framed as reconstructions, not interviews. Archival photographs are used under fair-use for historical commentary and education. This channel is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any company referenced in its videos.