Tandy Corporation

About

Tandy was one of the companies (along with Commodore International and Apple) that started the personal computer revolution, with their TRS-80 and TRS-80 Color Computer ("CoCo") line of home computers.

Founded in 1919 as a family-owned leather goods company in Fort Worth, Texas, Tandy entered the electronics market in 1962 when it purchased the bankrupt husk of Radio Shack for US$300,000. In 1977, Tandy entered the nascent home PC market with the TRS-80, with the TRS-80 Color Computer ("CoCo") arriving a couple of years later.

In 1984, Tandy adopted the IBM PC architecture, and released the Tandy 1000 and Tandy 2000. These machines were both cheaper than what IBM offered while offering superior sound and graphics (for the pre-VGA era). By the late 80s, Tandy had an extraordinarily varied line of computers on sale, ranging from $99 CoCos through to primitive laptops all the way to $3500 Xenix machines.

Tandy continued to create and sell its own computers until the dawn of the Pentium era, at which point it appears to have settled for selling other manufacturer's machines in their stores. In 2000, the Tandy name was dropped completely, with the leather side of the company completely sold and all the retail and electronics portions sitting under the Radio Shack name.

The Tandy name was acquired by a UK company in 2012, who operate under the name as an online retailer of hobbyist DIY electronics supplies. Sometime around the dawn of 2017, Radio Shack bought back the Tandy brand for a line of budget keyboards and mice.