TANDY SHOWCASE: Preserving the past - Tandy, Radio Shack and related things.
Computers in the Home
In 1984, Tandy Corp had a program named Tandy Home Education Systems to promote learning and education directly with families in the home. We have acquired several items that were produced through this program. Check out some of them below.
This brochure, "Computers, Your Family & The Future" provides a brief overview of what personal computers are, why they are important, and how they can be used in the home.
The brochure also discusses how children will become more familiar with computers as they become more prevalent in the schools.
This "slide rule" is used as a mini-glossary to identify and define some of the keywords that families may encounter while researching a home computer system.
This colorful wall poster features the key elements of a home computer system, including the Central Processing Unit, the Monitor/TV, Printer, Cassette Deck, Disk Drive, Joystick, and even the Telephone Modem, which was opening up a big new world of online computing in the mid 80's.
The inverse of the poster provides a quick explanation of each piece of hardware.
The Tandy Home Education Systems materials even included a "Family Computer Game", where the players would navigate around the game board, drawing cards in one of four categories and answering the questions to reach the goal. We're excited that our game board is intact - the game cards have not been cut off of the larger playfield. We'll get this one in a frame for future on-site exhibits.
Here are several computer programs that were available through the Tandy Home Education Systems program - everything from math, to science, and even test prep for high schoolers.
Computers in the Schools
This catalog was made available to educators and school districts to guide them in selecting the proper hardware and software for the growing computer curriculum in the schools.
In 2024 we acquired a set of 35mm slides, which contain a two-part presentation for Computers in Education. Released by Radio Shack in 1981, the initiative was focused on educators and school districts to identify and support the growing needs for computer education in schools.
The slides in Presentation 1 have succumbed to fading in their 40+ year existence, while Presentation 2 slides are still in full-color.
Breakthrough
While working through some archives of his own, a friend and fellow collector discovered this cassette that was randomly included in a non-related collection he acquired. Sure enough, this is the audio soundtrack to accompany the slides in the Presentation 1 carousel above. Joel scanned the slide images & digitized this audio, allowing us to combine the two into a single digital presentation, perhaps for the first time.
We have also located the original brochure sent from Tandy/Radio Shack, to educators announcing the program.
Scroll down to view the brochure and video.
Research
Upon receiving the slides, we conducted additional research to learn more about the initiative. This led us to Dr. Paul Kimmelman, a life-long educator and author of several articles in the 1980s about computers in education, including this Radio Shack initiative. We are working with Dr. Kimmelman to scan and archive his collection of articles & artifacts and will present them here.
There's more...
While conducting our research on the Radio Shack Educational slides, we discovered another collector, here in Texas, that has the 16mm filmstrip & accompanying audio cassette. We are working with this gentleman & hopefully will have his media preserved in the Showcase in the near future.