Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I Microcomputer Carrying Case
date: label: date made
content: 1977-1981
name: label: maker
content: Radio Shack
notes: label: Description
content: This custom-made carrying case contained the TRS-80 and related components (disk drive and expansion dock) used by the computer’s donor, Kenneth S. Widelitz. The monitor could not fit in the case and had to be carried separately.
label: Description
content: In the early 1970s, most personal computers came as hobbyist kits requiring a high level of technical expertise to assemble. Don French, a buyer for the consumer electronics chain Tandy Radio Shack (TRS), believed that Radio Shack should offer an assembled personal computer and hired engineer Steve Leininger to design it. In the summer of 1977, Radio Shack introduced the TRS-80 for $599. This offering included a BASIC language interpreter, four kilobytes of RAM, a Zilog Z80 processor at 1.77 megahertz, a twelve-inch video monitor, a cassette recorder, a power supply, and a cassette tape containing the games Blackjack and Backgammon. While some Tandy executives were skeptical about the success of the PC market, the availability of the TRS-80 on five thousand Radio Shack store shelves helped the Model 1 sell over one hundred thousand units during its first year, which was 50 percent of the total PCs sold in 1978.
label: Description
content: References:
label: Description
content: Radio Shack, A Tandy Company, 1978 Catalog No. 289, page 166, accessed September 1, 2014, http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalogs/1978.
label: Description
content: Radio Shack, A Tandy Company, 1979 Catalog No. 302, page 79–82, accessed September 1, 2014, http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalogs/1979.
label: Description
content: “BYTE News,” BYTE, May 1979, 117.
label: Description
content: Radio Shack, The Expanding World of TRS-80 TRS-80 Microcomputer Catalog RSC-3, 1979, accessed September 1, 2014, http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Tandy_RadioShack/RadioShack.TRS80.1970.102641285.pdf.
label: Description
content: Peggy A. Kidwell and Paul E. Ceruzzi, Landmarks in Digital Computing (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 96–99.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Computers
label: See more items in
content: American Enterprise
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: K.S. Widelitz
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1983.0169.01.1
label: catalog number
content: 1983.0169.01.1
label: accession number
content: 1983.0169
objectType: label: Object Name
content: microcomputer accessory
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: manufactured (overall production method/technique)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 22 cm x 74 cm x 61 cm; 8 11/16 in x 29 1/8 in x 24 in