August 3, 2010
August 3, 1977: The TRS-80 Personal Computer Goes on Sale
An original 1977 TRS-80 personal computer is in the collections of the American History Museum. Photo courtesy of the museum
It was with minimal expectations that, on August 3, 1977, Tandy Corporation teamed up with Radio Shack to release the TRS-80, one of the first personal computers available to consumer markets. While Don French—a buyer for the Tandy Radio Shack consumer electronic chain—had convinced some Tandy executives of the need to release a personal computer, most felt it was unlikely to gross substantial profits. This bulky item with complex operating procedures would never sell, they thought, more than 1,000 units in its first month.
But as soon as it hit the shelves, the $600 TRS-80, a hefty price for Radio Shack customers who were used to spending much less on their electronic needs, sold like hot cakes. There was something about these new computers that ignited fascination on the part of the American public.
“People were willing to put up with the difficulties of doing something just to play with these computers and see if they could make them work,” says David K. Allison, a curator of information technology at the National Museum of American History.
As it turned out, the TRS-80 surpassed even the most cautious sales estimates by tenfold within its first month on the market; the burgeoning prospects of a new era in personal electronics and computing could no longer be denied.
The TRS-80 was not the first personal computer for sale. The MITS Altair, a “microcomputer” first introduced in a 1975 issue of Popular Electronics magazine, is generally credited with jump starting the personal computer industry. Both Apple and IBM had begun making personal computers by 1977. But the TRS-80 was one of the first products that came fully assembled and ready to use, bridging the gap in accessibility between hobbyists—who took interest in the actual building of the computer—and the average American consumer, who wanted to know what this new, cutting-edge technology had in store for them.
The TRS-80 had no hard drive and four kilobytes of memory—for comparison’s sake, Apple’s new pocket-sized iPhone 4 has 512 megabytes of memory.
“Even if you bought a machine that was pretty much self-functioning like the TRS-80 was, just learning to do anything on it was difficult. There was limited software on it, you could play a few games, but word processing was rudimentary and had a lot of codes that you had to learn,” says Allison.
Though still in business today, Tandy has become primarily a phone manufacturer, but the TRS-80 proved to be the little computer engine that could.
An original TRS-80 computer is held in the collections of the National Museum of American History.
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Just so we’re clear on how far we’ve come…
the iPhone 4 has 131,072 times as much memory as the original TRS-80.
And it’s CPU speed is something like 2000 times faster (1.78 MHz versus 1 GHz and 4-bit CPU versus 32-bit and that’s a poor comparison.)
Oh, and you can stuff it in your pocket. Gotta love technology!
Back in the day, I had a TRS-80 Model III, my second computer after the VIC-20 and it was awesome.
–JR
Sorry, the Zilog Z80 CPU was an 8-bit CPU.
[...] Around the Mall profiles one of the world’s first personal computers, the TRS-80, an example of which is held at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and which went on sale for the first time this week back in 1977. [...]
The TRS-80 was actually a computer that nobody wanted. They felt it would never sell. They day it was shown to Charles Tandy, I was asked how many I felt could be sold the first year. My estimate was 50,000. I was laughed at being told that was impossible. They originally planned on making 1,000 machines to be sold. Prior to actual production they upped the number to 3,500 because that was the number of stores they had. And “when the product failed” they would use it in the store for inventory control. It was created to prove that Radio Shack was a technology company.
This was the machine that created the personal computer revolution/industry. It was their marketing money that created interest in the possibilities of real personal computing.
I was there. The computer was my idea and Radio Shack used my personal development system to develope the level one basic. The initial development work was started in mid 1976 with the first demonstration to Charles Tandy in late 1976. The product was announced on August 3,1977. We had over 15,000 requests to buy the product the first weekend. Because of the low projected sales, there was a huge backlog the day it was released.