Tandy, Radio-Shack catalogues and history

[Superscope]

Since Tandy also had Stores in Oz, maybe we have some Forum Members
from that side of the World who could run a parallel operation there?

Just a thought.




Ian

[SiriusHardware]

I wouldn't want to part with mine just yet but would have no problem taking the staples out and scanning them if they are not available to be donated from another source. I only have around three located nearby, possibly more in the loft but I would have no idea where to look for them.

The ones I have to hand are

1980-81
1986-87
1990-91

Just riffling through them, I find myself surprised by how many of the pages are in colour.

[Superscope]

SiriusHardware,

That's an excellent start.
Thanks for that.

There is no need to donate Catalogues if they are Scanned by the owners.
The more people willing to Scan the better.

The Donations only really apply to those not wishing, or unable to Scan them
themselves.



How many pages, and what approximate Page size are your Catalogues?

I seem to remember, the ones from the 70's and 80's were around A4 size,
stapled and around 100 Pages, but the later ones I remember being smaller in
Footprint, bound, glossy paper and 300 odd Pages.

The Later ones will be more of a Task to Scan.


Ian

[SiriusHardware]

80-81, 140 pages including outside covers.

86-87, 138 pages

90-91, 140 pages.

The earlier ones are stapled and therefore easily taken apart for scanning, the 90-91 edition has a 'square' spine as you say, and may be less easy to scan.

Even in the earliest one, around 1/3 or more of the pages are in colour.

[Terry_VK5TM]

Originally Posted by Paul Stenning

JPEG should be avoided for interim files as it is lossy.

I have done a lot of scanning to pdf and as per Paul, jpeg should be avoided at all costs - pdf software has the compression process built-in, it can't compress already compressed files.

To avoid having to mess with different settings (and remembering to change them), I choose a standard 300 DPI for all pages.

Don't forget to turn the 'Descreen' option on, otherwise you get pictures scanned with the moire/lines/dots of the original inked printing process, it does slow down the scanning process but results in much better output.

I have another conversion project waiting to be started for the World Radio History site (waiting for winter to set in, as there's nothing much to do outside then)

[radioman]

OK, I've located the three Tandy catalogues I've got.
They're :-
91-92 (glued square spine)
92-93 'Parts & Accessories' Catalogue (thin stapled)
93-94 (glued square spine)

I've only got an A4 flatbed scanner and I could scan the 92-93 one easily enough but the other two would take longer as I'd need to try and flatten the pages with something heavy for each scan... plus they've got a lot more pages.
I'll need to check my scanning software for a 'Descreen' option - it's a very old copy of Photoshop Elements.

Andy

[Peter88gate]

Hi,

I have the 1982-1983 catalogue which is 148 pages including cover pages.

I can donate it if you let me have details of where to send it.

Peter

[Superscope]

Hi Peter,

PM sent


Ian

[Superscope]

Originally Posted by Terry_VK5TM

I have done a lot of scanning to pdf and as per Paul, jpeg should be avoided at all costs - pdf software has the compression process built-in, it can't compress already compressed files.

Agreed, JPEG is best avoided.

So PNG or Tiff file format and 300dpi minimum resolution




Ian

[Paul Stenning]

I can make good PDFs from pages scanned that way, and could possibly downscale the resolution in the process to reduce file size, depending on the content and text size etc.

It is generally better to scan to image files then make the PDF rather than scanning directly to PDF, as the images can be tweaked, cleaned up and rotated as necessary.

I'm happy to attempt to scan one of the glue bound ones on my book scanner to see how it works. It wouldn't be dismantled, and would be returned.

Stapled ones should fold flat enough for a normal scanner without needing to remove the staples. It doesn't matter if every other page is upside down as they can be rotated before PDF creation.

[radioman]

Paul, I've sent you a PM.

Andy

[Paul Stenning]

First catalogue added - 1982/83 scanned by Superscope

https://www.vintage-radio.info/tandy

I have a catalogue with glued spine from radioman which I will attempt to scan on my book scanner soon.

The whole https://www.vintage-radio.info/ website is intended as an archive of useful and interesting documents. Because of its nature it isn't as organised or attractive as some other websites, but it is intended to keep the material freely available.

[SiriusHardware]

I haven't forgotten my supposed contributions to this, just finding the time to get going on it is the problem, as it's obviously quite a slow process. (I would be interested to know how long it took Superscope to do that first issue).

[SiriusHardware]

Just looking through that first one there are some great things in there, for example Tandy's initial range of UK specific CB radios which are something you wouldn't see in the USA version - that catalogue dates from what probably would have been my golden age of buying things from Tandy and looking through it made me realise just how much of their stuff I did have, and in many cases still do have.

[Paul Stenning]

I was an apprentice at that time (1980 to 1984) with day release to college in Southampton, so the Southampton Tandy store was a regular haunt for me. Of course on apprentice wages I couldn't afford much of the equipment, but I did have a multimeter similar to the one at the top right of page 98 (an earlier model with just the two rotary switches and two sockets) for many years.

The one I have here for scanning is 1991-92 so nearly a decade later. It'll be interesting to see how things have changed.

[radioman]

Hello everyone,

Although I've sent one of my 'glued' catalogues to Paul, I have spent the last three days scanning my 1992/93 Parts & Accessories one.
This is an A4 sized catalogue and although it has 36 pages in total, I've only just managed to produce a PDF of it.
The problem is the size of the file - it's 162Mb !
I'm amazed that Superscope managed to get his scan down to the size he did.
I don't have any fancy PDF creation software.... I used PDF-XChange Lite which is a 'Printer' type of creator.
I followed the advice above ; i.e. 300DPI scan resolution - I also reduced the number of colours to 256 as this made no visible difference but helped with file size for each page.
Not sure what else I can do as each page was still around 5,000 kb before I put them into a LibreOffice Draw file so they were in the correct order before 'printing'.

Any suggestions ?

Andy

[Nickthedentist]

Originally Posted by Paul Stenning

First catalogue added - 1982/83 scanned by Superscope

Wow, thank you, that's amazing!

The first one I got my hands on was probably only a year or two older, when I was taken into the Tandy shop in Wimbledon Broadway while we waited for a performance of Pinocchio at the Theatre. Happy days!

[Paul Stenning]

Originally Posted by radioman

Any suggestions ?

Send the scans to me (in a ZIP file) and I'll see what I can do. I use PDF-XChange Editor which has options for image compression and scaling when creating PDFs so I should be able to make a more reasonable sized PDF.

https://filetransfer.io/ works well for sending large files. I'll PM you my email address to use with it.

[Superscope]

Originally Posted by SiriusHardware

(I would be interested to know how long it took Superscope to do that first issue).

You probably don't want to know how long it took me!

In all honesty, I guess the whole procedure took about 6 hours, but of course it was my first bash and as a result, I did make some
mistakes that I had to go back over and do again.

Bearing in Mind, each page will probably take at least a Minute to Scan once a routine has got going.

Since the Catalogues are not exactly A4 (The later ones are even smaller I think), it is necessary to trim the Scans accordingly for
a neat appearance. Check out Page 81, I forgot to trim than Page.

An un-trimmed 148 Page Catalogue looks awful, so I went back and trimmed the lot. (except P81 as it turns out).

My Scanning Software (Canon) only gave me the option of .jpeg or .Tiff, so .Tiff it was.

Each Page was Trimmed in Adobe Photoshop, and I cleaned up a few Page marks along the way.
The final combined .pdf file was created using Adobe Acrobat.
Both very old versions.



Scans were originally about 25 Mb each.
Acrobat's first compilation brought the entire 148 Pages down to around 125 Mb.
Acrobat's own "Reduce File Size" option, brought it down to the 85 Mb it is now.

So hope that helps.

It is indeed a very long process to do it to a reasonable quality.
I don't envy anybody doing the later bound 400 odd Page editions!

But that said, I will do the Scans if somebody sends me the Catalogues.

For the Bound later versions, there is no getting away from the fact, they will be extremely difficult if not impossible to Scan well,
so it wound be best (Sadly) to destructively separate the donor Catalogue Pages if it is acceptable.



Ian

[Superscope]

Originally Posted by Nickthedentist

The first one I got my hands on was probably only a year or two older, when I was taken into the Tandy shop in Wimbledon Broadway while we waited for a performance of Pinocchio at the Theatre. Happy days!

Yep, Tandy in Wimbledon Broadway was my regular Saturday Afternoon excursion.

As you say, happy Days.



Ian