Radio Shack got started in the post WWII years from military surplus electronics. There were a number of similar outlets and Radio Shack was probably not the first, but it was the icon for stores catering to hobbyists building their own radios, hi-fi sound systems, and other gizmos.
There was a transition in the 1980s as the sons and daughters of Radio Shack customers began building their own IBM PC clones, buying hard drives, ram chips, blinken lights, etc, to build their own boxen. The torch was passed from Radio Shack to Frys' Electronics, whose physical presence on the Left Coast was overshadowed by its mail order business to all of North America. There were other players as well, Egg Head comes to mind, but Frys' was the epitome of the breed.
My last major purchase at Frys' was in 2010 when I worked with one of their guys to design my linux box to do fantastic (at the time) CG with Xubuntu (and dabble a bit with digital audio editing). That gave me 10 years of fun times.
But that era is now done. The 1960s was the height of ham radio operators building their own equipment from military surplus parts; the late 1990s was the height of computer nerds building their own boxen from components. Fry's death marks the end of that kind of hobbying.
What comes next? The type of mind that used to frequent Frys' (and Radio Shack before that) I think is now interested in personal 3D printing and CNC machines. I anticipate a lot of computers put to use, but of the Raspberry Pi variety, doing all kinds of menial jobs like custom Roombas to wash and wax your flying car, personalized computerized tooth brushes, physical talking heads for Siri, and so on.