radio shack

Back when the US was the only country manufacturing flat panel displays, heavily depending on GOV support, a GOV investigation panel contacted an exec at HP regarding their need for flat panel (LCD) display devices. (this was in the late '70's, IIRC) What wast told to the GOV investigator was that HP did not use LCD or flat-panel display technology then, nor would they ever do so, as they were a leading maker of LED display products. Within 6 weeks, HP started using LCD's in their battery-operated calculators and on an entire line of laboratory devices. Unfortunately, the flat-panel technology was not exploited in the US until the Japanese started offering them to the US. Another example of senior management not knowing what's going on. Clearly this is another case of the same sort of thing. The retail space is certainly worth more than what it's bringing in as parts sales these days. They still don't sell tools for handling surface mount devices, nor do they sell the devices, and nearly nothing uses the old DIP packages any longer. I doubt that parts sales have been a "pillar of the business" for over a decade, since it was nearly impossible to find out what a part really was, in terms of industry standard part number. Moreover, it's a famous problem getting a part at Radio Shack by asking for a "74LS244" even though every store had them in a blister pack on the rack. That suggests that they really didn't want that business anyway. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: <Golemancd(a)aol.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 11:19 AM Subject: radio shack