Content Matters

Thirty years ago today, August 3, 1977, Radio Shack introduced the TRS 80 personal computer.

The "Trash 80" as it was affectionately referred to was not the first personal computer.  But it was the first affordable PC that was a complete unit.  IBM had a PC available with a $50k price tag.  And hobbyists had adopted the Altair 8800, but without a keyboard or monitor, the Altair was a kit designed for the tinkerer.

But the TRS-80 was a complete PC, with keyboard, monitor, CPU, memory and a programming language.  The "professional" version came complete with 48k of RAM for a $2,500 price tag, while an entry level version for just $599 included a whopping 4k of RAM.  There was no hard drive; files were stored on audio cassettes.  Along with the Apple IIe and the Commodore, the TRS-80 made personal computing accessible to a wide market.  Pre-launch, Radio Shack was concerned about whether they'd actually be able to sell the 3,000 units they had built.  In fact, the 3,000 units were chosen because Radio Shack had 3,000 retail outlets and they figured they could use them for accounting purposes within each store if they didn't sell.

The first PC I ever used was a TRS-80.  My senior year of high school (1980), the school decided that computer science was not a fad, but an actual course of study.  That year, I took a Fortran course (using punch cards) and a Basic course on the TRS-80.  Our teacher was taking a course at the local college, staying about two weeks ahead of us.  We didn't do any fancy programming; as I recall, my final project was creation of a Blackjack game.  But the TRS-80 gave many of us our first realization that computing was accessible.