Happy Nice Mall

John Roach, a marketing visionary who helped make the home computer ubiquitous by promoting the fully assembled Tandy TRS-80 for $599.95 or less through RadioShack chain stores in the late 1970s, died Sunday in Fort Worth. He was 83 years old.

His death at the hospital was confirmed by his wife, Jean Roach. No reason was given.

Mr. Roach had college experience dealing with refrigerator-size mainframes in 1967 when he joined the Tandy Corporation, a Texas conglomerate founded as a leather goods company that included RadioShack and thousands of franchisees in electronics farrago.

He was instrumental in encouraging Tandy to enter the computer market. At the time, most small computers were sold in kits to be assembled by hobbyists, but Mr Roach believed consumers would welcome a model they just had to plug in.

His team presented the original TRS-80 prototype, assembled from a black-and-white RCA monitor, keyboard, and videocassette recorder, to Tandy’s CEO. Charles Tandy and Lewis KornfeldPresident of RadioShack in January 1977.

Apple 1 was introduced a year ago, and Commodore and other companies were marketing their own home computers, but TRS-80 (initialized for Tandy RadioShack) most popular computer on the market.

“Charles blew some smoke and said, ‘Make a thousand and if we can’t sell them, we’re going to use them in the store for something,'” Mr Roach said. Fort Worth Executive Roundtable last month.

“We were finally able to ship some machines in September and we were able to ship 5,000 that year,” Mr. Roach said. “Our competitors did not send any.”

At just under $600 (about $2,700 in today’s dollars), the computer was relatively inexpensive ($399 if attached to a separately owned display screen). It was available in all of the company’s 8,000 stores.

Tandy hired Bill Gates and Paul AllenThe future founders of Microsoft are about to write custom software for personal, home and small business purposes and games. In 1982, to promote computer and modem sales, Mr. Roach persuaded Fort Worth’s Star-Telegram to become one of the first online newspapers in the country.

The TRS-80 was so newly adopted that it was later adopted as a model for the Smithsonian National Museum of American History collection.

John Vinson Roach II was born on November 22, 1938 in Stamford, a rural farming community of several thousand in West Texas. His mother, Agnes Margaret (Hanson) Roach, was a nurse. His father had a meat market that was closed due to rationing during World War II, and the family moved to Fort Worth and opened a grocery store there.

Young John, a mathematical genius, calculated the change in his father’s grocery store without using a cash register. He worked on high school unloaders for Montgomery Ward retailers.

He graduated from Texas Christian University with a bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1961 and then worked for two years at the Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii before returning to college where he earned a master’s degree in business administration in 1965.

When Mr Roach joined Tandy Corporation as data processing manager, said in an interview With the university in 2007, “the concept or thought of a personal computer was not even conceived.”

The TRS-80 sales boom came just in time to revive Tandy, who was in a slump after the popularity of two-way citizen band radios waned. After Mr. Tandy died in 1978, Mr. Roach became vice president of RadioShack. He became chief operating officer in 1980.

Tandy’s early dominance would fade as competitors developed models that were equally cheap or that offered higher speeds and more functionality. By 1991, the company’s share of the local home computer market had shrunk to 3.5 percent; By 1981 it had risen to 40 percent.

In the 1990s, when the conglomerate employed 37,500 workers and reported annual sales of $4.3 billion, Mr. Roach sought to reposition RadioShack more generally as the “Tech Store”.

He retired in 1999 from positions he had held since 1983 as CEO and chairman of Tandy.

Changing its name to RadioShack in 2000, Tandy overcame the fierce competition and continued as an e-commerce site and franchise business with the slogan “Shack is back”.

In the 1990s, Mr. Roach was chairman of the board of trustees of Texas Christian University, doubling his donation to help it exceed $1 billion, build a technology hub, and play a supporting role in Fort Worth’s civic and cultural life. In 2007, the John V. Roach Honors College was donated in his honor at TCU by his friends Paul and Judy Andrews of Fort Worth.

“He was able to blend his wit with judgment,” J. Luther King Jr., his friend and successor to the chairman of the board, said in an interview. Mr Roach added that he had succeeded in transforming the university “from a regional university to a national university”.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Roach is survived by his two daughters, Amy Roach Bailey and Lori Roach Davis; six grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

Mr. Roach has felt comfortable with computers personally and professionally since his college days. Shortly before he died, his family said he FaceTimed his grandchildren and watched TCU beat Seton Hall online at the NCAA basketball tournament.