RadioBanter - View Single Post - Did Radio Shack start out selling ham stuff?

February 2nd 05, 10:28 PM

"Gary S." Idontwantspam@net wrote in message
...
On Wed, 02 Feb 2005 03:18:41 -0600,
wrote:

Did Radio Shack (the store) start out selling Ham Equipment and stuff?
Based on their name I sort of suspect that.

I know they used to carry a decent stock of parts, but now they just
sell lots of toys and a few overpriced useful home electronic items.

From their web page at
http://www.radioshackcorporation.com/about/history.html

The First RadioShack Store
Two years later and half a continent away, two brothers, Theodore and
Milton Deutschmann, opened a one-store retail and mail-order operation
in the heart of downtown Boston. They chose the name, "RadioShack,"
which was a term for the small, wooden structure that housed a ship's
radio equipment. The Deutschmanns thought the name was appropriate for
a store that would supply the needs of radio officers aboard ships, as
well as "ham" radio operators.

Beginning in 1921, RadioShack would grow to a handful of stores
clustered in the Northeast, and become a leading electronics
mail-order distributor to hobbyists. This is how it would remain until
the company and a young Texan named Charles Tandy crossed paths four
decades later.
***

It would seem that the focus was on radio operators from the very
start, professional as well as amateurs, as you suspected from the
name.

The Radio Shack that I knew was a store on Central Ave in Newark NJ which
sprung up sometime in the mid 1920s. I don't think it was connected with
the Deutschmann group. It seemed to carry mostly surplus. I started my
electronic junque box there in 1929. I still have some of that stuff,
including a gridleak I just found. (What's a gridleak you say?)

Marty K1FHR