Heathkit
Heathkits were products of the Heath Company,
Benton Harbor, Michigan. Their products included
electronic test equipment,
high fidelity home audio equipment, Black & White and Color
TV receivers,
amateur radio equipment, and the influential Heath H-8, H-89, and H-11 hobbyist
computers, which were sold in
kit form for assembly by the purchaser. Today, audio kits are known as
DIY audio ("
do it yourself"
audio).
The Heath Company was originally founded as an
aircraft company in the early 1900s by
Edward Bayard Heath. Starting in
1926 it sold a light aircraft, the Heath Parasol, in kit form. Heath died during a
1931 test flight. In
1935,
Howard Anthony purchased the now-bankrupt Heath Company, and focused on selling accessories for small aircraft. After
World War II, Anthony decided that entering the electronics industry was a good idea, and bought a large stock of surplus wartime electronic parts with the intention of building kits with them. In
1947, Heath introduced its first electronic kit, an
oscilloscope that sold for
US$50 -- the price was unbeatable at the time, and the oscilloscope went on to be a huge seller.
After the success of the oscilloscope kit, Heath went on to produce dozens of Heathkit products. Heathkits were influential in shaping two generations of electronic hobbyists. The Heathkit sales premise was that by investing the time to assemble a Heathkit, the purchaser could build something comparable to a factory-built product at a very significantly lower cash cost. During those decades, the premise was basically valid. Commercial factory-built electronic products were constructed from generic, discrete components such as
vacuum tubes, tube sockets, capacitors, inductors and
resistors, and essentially hand-wired and assembled. The home kit-builder could perform the same assembly tasks himself, and if careful, to at least the same standard of quality. In the case of their most expensive product, the
Thomas electronic organ, building the Heathkit version represented very substantial savings.
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Heathkit IO12U oscilloscope built in 1967 |
One category in which Heathkit enjoyed great popularity was amateur radio. Ham radio operators had frequently been forced to build their equipment from scratch before the advent of kits, with the difficulty of procuring all the parts separately and relying on often-experimental designs. Kits brought the convenience of all parts being supplied together and the assurance of a predictable finished product; many Heathkit models became well-known in the ham radio community.
The exterior fit and finish of the Heathkit enclosures was not always quite up to the standards of factory-built products, but a Heathkit
amplifier, for instance, did not look out of place in a living room. The technical characteristics of many Heathkits were good. The ordinary consumer would, of course, buy a factory-built phonograph from the likes of
RCA; but an
audiophile, who was serious enough to assemble a system from individual components, frequently gave serious consideration to Heathkit products.
In the case of electronic test equipment, Heathkits often filled a low-end niche. A
Hewlett-Packard,
Tektronix, or
Fluke product might have metal vernier dials or ten-turn pots with digital readouts, while a Heathkit would might use a simple plastic pointer and a scale silk-screened onto the front panel. A $40 Heathkit oscilloscope might not be remotely comparable to a factory-built oscilloscope—but there
were no $40 (or even $100) factory-built oscilloscopes.
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Heathkit DX-100 Amateur Transmitter built in 1958 by W3BOA / W4AHY |
Building a Heathkit required time, patience, and the ability to follow directions; given these, the risk of failure was small. Heathkits were absolutely complete except for tools. The instruction books were regarded as the best in the kit industry, being models of clarity, beginning with basic lessons on
soldering technique, and proceeding with explicit directions, illustrated with line drawings, and a box to tick as each task was accomplished.
No knowledge of electronics was needed to assemble a Heathkit. The assembly process did not teach much about electronics, but provided a great deal of what could have been called "electronics literacy," such as the ability to identify tube pin numbers or read a
resistor color code. Many hobbyists began by assembling Heathkits, became familiar with the appearance of components like
capacitors,
transformers, and tubes, and were motivated to find out just what these components actually did. Heath developed a relationship with electronics correspondence schools (e.g.,
NRI). Heath supplied electronic kits to be assembled as part of courses, with the school basing its texts and lessons around the kit.
For much of Heathkit's existence, there were competitors. In electronic kits:
Allied Electronics, an electronic parts supply house, had its KnightKits, Lafeyette Electronics offered some kits,
Radio Shack made a few forays into this market (mainly with reconfigurable "100-in-1"-type systems),
Dynaco made its audio products available in kit form (Dynakits), as did H. H. Scott, Inc. and Elenco, and later such companies as
Southwest Technical Products, and many garage industries supplied less polished kits based on build-it-yourself articles in the electronics hobbyist press. None had anything comparable to the quality and polish, and influence, of the Heathkits.
After the death of Howard Anthony in 1954, Heath was bought by
Daystrom Company, a
furniture maker that was diversifying into electronics. Daystrom was absorbed by oilfield service company
Schlumberger Limited in
1962, and the Daystrom/Schlumberger days were Heathkit's most successful. In
1974, Heathkit started
Heathkit Educational Systems, which expanded their manuals' clear writing style into general electronics and computer training materials. Heathkit also expanded their expertise into
digital and, eventually, computerized equipment, producing among other things
digital clocks and
weather stations with the new technology.
The last great flourishing of the Heathkit was probably the
1978 introduction of the
Heathkit H-8 computer. The earliest computers had been sold as kits to begin with, but were somewhat primitive. in contrast, Heath had real experience in producing kit electronic equipment and the Heath name carried confidence with it. The H-8 was successful, as was the H-19 and H-29 terminals, and the H-89 one piece terminal/computer. The H-11, a low-end
DEC PDP-11 16-bit computer, was less so, but it was substantially more expensive than the 8-bit computer line. Seeing the potential in personal computers,
Zenith Radio Company bought Heath Company from Schlumberger in
1979, renaming the computer division
Zenith Data Systems (ZDS).
By the 1980s, the continuation of the integration trend (
printed circuit boards,
integrated circuits, etc), and mass production of electronics (perhaps especially computers overseas and in plug in modules) eroded the basic Heathkit business model. Assembling a kit might still be fun, but it could no longer save much money. The switch to
surface mount components and
LSI ICs (many of which were custom made and not available in small quantities to the general public, much less to Heath) finally made it impossible for the home assembler to construct an electronic device which was competitive with assembly line factory products. As sales of its kits dwindled during the decade, Heath relied on its training materials and a new venture in
home automation and
lighting products to stay afloat. When Zenith eventually sold ZDS to
Groupe Bull in
1989, Heathkit was included in the deal.
On
March 30,
1992, the end came. Heath announced that it was closing out its kits and leaving the business after 45 years, the last maker of the old name-brand kit makers.
The Heathkit company still exists (and is still located in Benton Harbor), and now concentrates on the Educational Systems side of the business; it has not resumed making kits, though it does still have the schematic and manual library, and has pointers to people that can help with the older equipment. Heathkit has been through several owners since 1989; in
1995 it was sold by Bull to a private investor group called HIG, which then sold it to another investment group in
1998. Wanting to only concentrate on the educational products, this group sold the Heath/Zenith name and products to
DESA International, a maker of specialty tools and
heaters.
* Fisher, Lawrence M. "Plug is Pulled on Heathkits, Ending a Do-It-Yourself Era",
The New York Times, 30 March 1992, page A1.
* Rostky, George. "A Tale Of The Unstoppable Electronic Kit",
EE Times, 2 October 2000.
reprinted here*
Official Site*
The Heathkit Virtual Museum History, pictures and descriptions of many Heathkits, including the classic
Heathkit VTVM* HeathKit HF Amplifier Yahoo Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HeathKit_HFAmps/ A group for helping Amateur Radio operators who own Heathkit HF Amplifiers.
*
Heath H8 information,
including a simulator*
Collection of old digital and analog computers including Heathkit EC-1, Heathkit H8 and etc.
