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Remember Radio Shack?

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I don't think they really went out of business through any fault of their own, the model they were created on just doesn't work anymore. The stopped stocking so many electronic components, but they did because the customers were not buying as many, so they couldn't make any money off it, so they had to start doing other things. First of all there just aren't as many electronic do it yourselfer's hobbyists, and kit builders anymore (we here being more the exception than the rule). The generation that grew up with chemistry, erector sets, and slot cars you took apart and serviced and hopped up yourself is aging out. The younger set has grown up with cel. phones and video games that contain a lot more micro-electronics and which really weren't made to be fixed they were made to be thrown away and replaced.

Second, those that do buy electronic components don't buy from stores, they buy them online, where they can get much better pricing, because they can offer that better pricing with the lower overhead at the regional warehouse where the order picker handles 500 orders a day while the store clerk sees 50 customers, half of whom don't buy anything. The electronics parts business lends itself very well to internet based sales, literally thousands of different types of components hard to stock in a small local store economically, much easier to keep in a large regional warehouse, small bits that are easy and cheap to ship as well. Changing demographics, alternative delivery models it was has driven them out of business more than anything.

I am just old enough to remember when tubes were still common, and a lot of people knew how to replace them, **** our local drug store had a tube tester and a pretty good stock of tubes, we had a local electronics store in addition to Radio Shack, they had all sorts of stuff, including a good stock of needles for our record players.
 
"a good stock of needles for our record players."

Wow - there's a memory. Victrola -> phonograph -> record player -> stereo -> ???

(Funny thing about "phonograph", as it actually refers to recording, not making, sound. Like Photograph.)

I still hear young folks say "turn up the stereo" - but I'm betting few know why it's called a stereo!

And remember this ill-named audio system from the 1980s?
0301a03fig2.jpg


 
NEEDLES! Boy, does that bring back memories! Here's the dialogue, repeated hundreds of times, from my experience in Radio Shack stores in the '70s in New Orleans:

Customer: "I need a needle for my box."
Me (or any other RS employee): "What kind of box you got?"
Customer: "Stereo."
Me: "OK, what brand?"
Customer: "Solid State."
Me: ~Sigh~ "Do you have the old needle? We can match it up."
Customer: "No, but I remember it was red, or maybe white."

And on and on...

And another time, in the first store I managed in the old St. Charles Hotel, downtown New Orleans:

Couple of customers brought in a reel-to-reel tape recorder for repair (we sent stuff out to a local shop). While I was writing up the ticket with one of the guys standing at the counter, the other one was roaming the store with his eyes on me. Had a bad feeling, and kept an eye on him, as I thought he might be looking for something to shoplift. The guy at the counter was doing his best to keep my focus on him, but to no avail. Finished the ticket and as they were leaving, I followed them to the door, which was around a little hallway - not the best design for a store. My hunch was right: as they opened the door and ran out, one of them scooped up the red doormat with a big Radio Shack logo on it; all the stores had 'em.

When they returned to pick it up a few weeks later, they asked me how much the repair bill was. I told them $40, plus the doormat they took. Of course they denied any wrongdoing, but I told them I saw them take it. They left, vowing to return with the police. Never saw them again. And I paid the $40 bill and took the reel-to-reel home. Still have it!
 
And I still have that mat!

(oops ...)

Speaking of reel to reel machines, I remember our first, a Wollensak. Replaced our pre-war wire recorder with this new-fangled magnetic acetate stuff. Sic fugit gloria mundi.

This will bring back some memories:

many_catalogs_pages.gif


Recently learned that a Reich broadcasting corporation was recording on stereo tape recorders even as the Soviets were invading Berlin in 1945. There's a YouTube recording of a Beethoven piano concerto, and you can hear cannon fire in the background. Wow.
 
We had Allied, Heath, Layfayette catalogs on the coffee table most of the time. McMasters, too. Dad would design and build preamps and stereo gear from scratch as well. As a ten-year-old I was relegated to the Heath stuff. But I learned.

Went to the local RS to hunt some low ohm ½-watt resistors recently... stunned to find they no longer stocked many discreet components. Grew up relatively rural so a trip to "town" usually included a stop to the RS store. We had a family-owned electronics supply business there, too. Dad was pals with the owners and was always involved in designing/building some sort of electronics project. The ultrasonic test equipment the company he worked for (Babcock & Wilcox) and utilized to inspect nuclear-grade tubing, was designed and built by dad and a few co-workers in our living room. I learned about Snell's law and Sperry O-scope operation as a young kid. Taught (indulged!) by metallurgists, physicists, EE's. Early exposure! Most all of those fine gents have passed now, the company is long gone from that area. We now walk around staring at cell 'phones, buy water by the pint, view TV coming down a "pipe" we're expected to BUY... And all but a handful of the population has even a hint as to how anything actually works. Sad.


Now it's mouser.com for components. And most of it is so inexpensive RS could never compete.
 
WIRE recorders! Yup! Then had acetate mag tape mono ones as we went thru grade school. When John Glenn went up, mum recorded the event with a stereo Roberts deck so we kids could listen to the whole thing after school. I've still got a Hallicrapters SX-99 receiver here, too. And in some desk drawer around here there are a bunch of QSL cards from around the planet. I even wrote off and got one from Radio Moscow.
 
Doc - I think your Dad and my Dad must have been cousins. Back in the 1950s, my Dad (a radar instructor during WW2) figured out how to take a monaural tape recorder, and using "fast forward" speed, he could record TV from some set of leads inside the TV chassis. I think a five inch reel of tape held about one minute of TV - but it played back!

Of course, there were these things calls "wires" back then ...
 
:lol: We've not given up on the wires yet, Tom. The hovel is rife with 'em. At least two CAT-5 drops in every room, a coax drop in each for TV as well.
 
Hey, I will forget all this new fangled stereo stuff and recording equipment your fathers worked on, my grandfather would tell me about the "cat's whisker" radio receiver he built in the teens (yikes guess that makes it about 100 years ago now), huge antenna made of spare scrap metal from the farm, actually my dad had a little radio that operated on the same principal, it didn't have a battery or a speaker, but just a little mono ear plug, but you could get local AM just fine, with my rudimentary understanding of electronics at the time I was flabbergasted that you could get sound without a battery, maybe not "was" maybe still am somewhat.
 
Having taken all that stuff apart (in time), I still have one of those variable capacitors.
 
The R/S line included Science Fair kits for the young'ns. Mickey probably remembers this:

crystal-radio-kit-150x150.jpg


But a *real* crystal radio was more like this:

daveboudreau3.jpg


Mine used a safety pin over a galena crystal as the "detector". Here's a happy family listening to King Tut and his Tennessee Tooters, performing "There Ain't No Maybe in my Baby's Eyes":

Crystal_radio_advertisement.png


(Yep - I've got a recording of it!)
 
Interestingly was watching the news this AM and the scrolling headline underneath referenced the Chapter 11 - and said that RS had identified Internet Sales as the reason for their demise. Fascinating. I am mindful of a friend who said, "for every complicated question there is a simple answer - and it is the wrong one." Yes Internet, but (as we have been discussing) so very much more than that - internal & external.
 
Easiest to point to the most obvious first. And the 'net is a prime target for pointing to lately with "Net Neutrality" in the offing (I'm dead-set against it, BTW).

Built a cat's whisker radio at about age ten. Dad handed me a "How-To" article (likely from Popular Electronics) and turned me loose. :thumbsup:
 
NutmegCT said:
The R/S line included Science Fair kits for the young'ns. Mickey probably remembers this:

crystal-radio-kit-150x150.jpg


But a *real* crystal radio was more like this:

daveboudreau3.jpg


Mine used a safety pin over a galena crystal as the "detector". Here's a happy family listening to King Tut and his Tennessee Tooters, performing "There Ain't No Maybe in my Baby's Eyes":

Crystal_radio_advertisement.png


(Yep - I've got a recording of it!)
Click to expand...

Yep - Science Fair was one of Radio Shack's brands.

And like many, I built a crystal radio, an oatmeal box radio, etc., etc.

And the picture of the oatmeal box radio reminded me of one of the items I couldn't keep in stock: alligator clips. And the ones who bought them had no idea what their primary use was. :wink:
 
DrEntropy said:
Easiest to point to the most obvious first. And the 'net is a prime target for pointing to lately with "Net Neutrality" in the offing (I'm dead-set against it, BTW).

Built a cat's whisker radio at about age ten. Dad handed me a "How-To" article (likely from Popular Electronics) and turned me loose. :thumbsup:
Click to expand...

And was thinking about that also. Yes, an end to tinkering etc. etc. but you can't build an ipod or a cell phone the way you used to build a radio or a computer.
 
JPSmit said:
Yes, an end to tinkering etc. etc. but you can't build an ipod or a cell phone the way you used to build a radio or a computer.
Click to expand...

But now we have Arduino, Raspbery Pi, Instructable, Sparkfun. Not to mention the coders. Building different things with electronics, now software and hardware. I've got an Arduino on my desk that I built (physically built, soldered it myself, admittedly surprised that it worked) at a computer security conference last year. Intend to add a motion sensor one of these days for fun. So the fiddling still goes on, just the modern version. There's still hope.
 
drooartz said:
But now we have Arduino, Raspbery Pi, Instructable, Sparkfun. Not to mention the coders. Building different things with electronics, now software and hardware. I've got an Arduino on my desk that I built (physically built, soldered it myself, admittedly surprised that it worked) at a computer security conference last year. Intend to add a motion sensor one of these days for fun. So the fiddling still goes on, just the modern version. There's still hope.
Click to expand...

Good points. Things change... and these newer digital projects are pretty cool too! I remember how difficult robotics were 45 years ago... but not now (with amazing sensors and controllers). And speaking of Radio Shack, my local one has Arduino (and related) gear at 40% off.
 
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