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RadioShack's parent unveils a $399 computer; skeptics inside the company called it unsellable

Tandy built it for under $150,000 and ordered just 3,500 units.

CB radio sales were fading, and Tandy Corporation, the leather-and-electronics retailer behind RadioShack, needed a new product to fill 3,000 stores. On August 3, 1977, at a press conference in New York City, Tandy announced the TRS-80: a Zilog Z80 machine with 4 KB of RAM, a full keyboard, and a cassette drive, priced at $399, or $599 bundled with a monitor and tape recorder. Company executives had spent months insisting computers wouldn't sell. Tandy planned to build only 3,500 units to start; within the first month and a half, more than 10,000 had sold…

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More from August 3

Owens takes 100-meter gold in Hitler's stadium, 10.3 seconds

The first of four gold medals, run in the stadium Hitler built to prove Aryan supremacy.

A father administers the presidential oath by lamplight in a Vermont farmhouse

Word of Harding's death reaches Plymouth Notch after midnight, and there is no federal judge for miles.

Chambers names Hiss a communist under oath before Congress

A Time magazine editor tells the House Un-American Activities Committee that a former State Department official once ran with a Soviet spy ring.

Ninety-six hours under the ice and 1,590 nautical miles later, the submarine surfaces northeast of Greenland.

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More from Cold War America

Washington expels the Soviet consul who wouldn't produce Oksana Kasenkina

Eight days after she jumped from his consulate's third-floor window, Jacob Lomakin is handed his passport home.

Eisenhower signs the proclamation: Hawaii is now the 50th state

The order follows a territorial vote in which 94 percent said yes to joining the Union.

Marine Corps' first Black Medal of Honor recipient is honored in Washington

Eighteen months after he smothered a grenade to save his platoon, James Anderson Jr.'s parents accept the medal in his place.

Walker rides the X-15 to 354,200 feet, becoming the first person to reach space twice

A frozen thruster and 650-degree reentry heat couldn't stop the highest flight the rocket plane program would ever make.

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