It seems like a good Jeopardy question. This early home computer was called the blank 80. In this blog post, I’ll fill in the blank, explain what the number 80 meant, and why the number was more memorable than the initials.
The early home computer blank 80 was the TRS-80, manufactured by Tandy Corporation and sold in its Radio Shack stores.
What TRS-80 meant
The TRS-80 Model 1 originally came out in 1977. The name referred to three things: who made it, who sold it, and what CPU was in it.
The 80 referred to the Zilog Z-80 CPU, specifically. The TRS-80 Model 1 was the only one of the three pioneering home computers released in 1977 that used it, but the Z-80 did go on to be used in numerous other early home computers soon after.
The name proved catchy, so Tandy and Radio Shack continued using it. They even used it on their computers that did not use the Z-80 CPU. There were plenty of other numbers they could have used on subsequent machines that arguably would have been more appropriate. But all of them were more problematic.
The letters TRS proved more problematic than the number 80. The TRS initials led to the unfortunate nickname of Trash 80, and that ultimately led Tandy and Radio Shack to abandon it in favor of using the Tandy name.
Why you can’t remember the blank in the early home computer blank 80
The catchiness of the number 80 is why Tandy didn’t want to stop using it even on computers with other CPUs. Its widely successful portable Model 100 really by all rights should have been a TRS-85. The popular TRS-80 Color Computer would more rightfully be called a TRS-68, or maybe a TRS-09, because it had a Motorola 6809 processor.
But think about seeing the name TRS-80 in 1977. Knowing nothing else about it, doesn’t your mind go to the product being a computer for the 1980s? Releasing a computer called the TRS-68 sends your mind back to 1968, and practically begs a competitor to release some ad saying that while the other guys were building a machine for 1968, we were building one for the future. Even Commodore’s famously inept marketing would have crushed that one.
TRS-85 is less problematic than TRS-68, because it would have been staking a claim in the future upon its release in 1983. But the name would turn into a liability in 1986 and beyond. Claiming the whole decade seems like a better bet. In a growth industry, you gotta go big or go home.
Success of the TRS-80
The TRS-80 and their overall strategy worked well for Tandy and Radio Shack. Apple fans get upset when I say this, so I point it out as often as I can. The initial TRS-80 line outsold the Apple II when both of them were on the market. The portable TRS-80 Model 100 series sold almost exactly the same number of machines as the Apple II series.
When Tandy announced in 1984 that planned to transition to making and selling IBM compatible computers, it wasn’t a universally popular decision. Some people lamented the industry losing Tandy as an innovator. For a while, the Tandy 1000 made it look like the critics were wrong, because it ended up being the best selling computer line of the late 1980s. But it may have been too successful, because Tandy never figured out what to do after that. What happened to Tandy computers is another story.
But if all you wanted to know was what the blank in the blank 80 early home computer was, the blank was TRS.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.