Was the Model I ever sold as a kit?

Some have claimed that Radio Shack offered the Model I as a kit before selling it as a fully-assembled computer. That is not true. From the very beginning, the TRS-80 was sold only fully assembled and there was never a TRS-80 kit option in any Radio Shack catalog. From the original August 3, 1977 press release:

The latest development in electronics for the home, according to Radio Shack, is a complete, low-cost microcomputer system.

Just introduced by the nationwide electronics store chain is the new Radio Shack TRS-80 Microcomputer System. Not a kit, the TRS-80 comes completely wired and tested, ready to plug in and use.

From a March 1981 80 Microcomputing interview with Lewis Kornfield, the president of Tandy Corporation when the TRS-80 was developed:

The game was played basically by my rules. And I’m not computer anything. But my rules were: No kit, we wanted to sell something that worked right out of the box. No funny names, you know, like apples or oranges or lemons. As I put it, no racing stripes. We wanted it to look like a piece of business equipment. I wanted to start out by selling a complete system at a price. And I wanted - I insisted - that this system be expandable to whatever limit it had, which was well over my head. But that’s exactly what we did.

From the question and answer section at the end of the first catalog in which the TRS-80 appeared:

Q. I’m a layman when it comes to electronics. Does the TRS-80 require any wiring or soldering at all?

A. No! Each component of this system is 100% assembled and tested.

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