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From: hsilbiger@attmail.att.com (Herman R Silbiger)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Allied Radio / Radio Shack
Message-ID: <16727@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 7 Feb 91 01:37:47 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 97, Message 1 of 10


In article <16708@accuvax.nwu.edu>, Barton.Bruce@camb.com (Barton F.
Bruce) writes:

> [Moderator's Note: Sad to say, there is *no way* a radio/electronics
> gear store of the 1950-60 era could operate today, given the economics
> involved. The old Allied Radio store had *barrels* of capacitors and
> other components sitting around everywhere -- sort through them and

> Olson was the same way. How they made a profit I'll never know. I
> guess in fact they did not make a profit since they, like Allied, are
> out of business. Blisterpacked gadgets and salespeople who know from
> nothing are where the profit is now-a-days. In the old days, the sales
> help in those stores were almost always hobbyists themselves, with
> hobbyist mentalities, stringing components together to make things
> work like they wanted. It was easy for them to empathize with the
> customer and spend time discussing your project and helping you dig
> through barrels of poorly marked capactitors, vacuum tubes, switches
> and plugs finding what was needed. Imagine most RS clerks doing that
> today or even knowing/caring what your home-brew project is about.  PAT] 

Actually, Olson only handled their "own brand" of stuff, while Allied
handled many brands.  I assembled my first hifi system from Allied,
and bought most of it out of the Chicago store.  The Allied catalog
was required reading to find out what was new in electronics.
Allied's principal competitor was Lafayette Radio, in New York City.
Lafayette was located on Lafayette Street in NYC, near Hudson and
Varick Streets.  This area was known as Radio Row, and had many radio
and electronics parts and surplus strores.  The area disappeared when
the World Trade Center was built.  One store from that area still
exists uptown, Harvey Radio (now Harvey Electronics), and is an
upscale sound system dealer.

I bought one rarity from Lafayette, an black dial phone ("for hobbyist
use only" in those days :-) ), which turned out to have been
manufactured by HEEMAF in the Netherlands, a company mainly known for
its AC motors.


Herman Silbiger


[Moderator's Note: Ah yes, Lafayette! There was a nice Lafayette store
in Chicago on Wabash Avenue until about 1968 or so ... I bought a few
things from them, but mostly for my stereo: a pre-amp, cartridges, a
couple of speakers, a reverb unit, etc.   PAT]