ABSTRACT
In 1921, another dynamic duo, brothers eodore and Milton Deutschmann, added some high-tech avor to the CoCo’s origin story by opening the rst Radio Shack in Boston. Borrowing the name for the store from the literal name for the original wooden room used for housing radio equipment aboard U.S. Navy ships, Radio Shack similarly specialized in supplying ship radio equipment and “ham” radios. It was in supplying these amateur radio enthusiasts, or hams, who utilized the latest commercially available radio technology for noncommercial, mostly entertainment-related communications purposes, that either company would rst directly target the consumer market. In many ways, targeting hams in the 1920s would parallel to targeting computer hobbyists in the 1970s, with both leading to bigger and better things to come in the subsequent decades.
