The History Archive – The Mistake That Built Heathkit, and the America That Buried It
An evening pause: This bit of technological history forms a sad bookend to that of the Cox .049 engine evening pause from several weeks ago.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
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Back in the day, I remember building Heathkit radios and Knight Kit (Allied Radio) kits as well. My first transistor radio was a Knight Kit. It even had an “ear bud”. My uncle built the Heathkit TV. CB radios and transmitters were available as kits. Also high quality instrumentation. This was almost 70 years ago. It was how we learned electronics as young teens. Great kits, great times, great memories. Thank you!
Starting in high school, I was an enthusiastic shortwave listener. My first receiver was a Heathkit (I think it’s shown at around 12:00 minutes). With it, I heard all sorts of international broadcasters from a variety of countries.
But Heath wasn’t the only one that went belly up. The podcast This Week In Amateur Radio used to have a feature called The Amateur Radio Archives, hosted by the late Bill Continelli W2XOY (SK). He had a number of programs devoted to the rise and fall of some well-known brands.
Many of those companies (e. g., Hammerlund and Hallicrafters) started nearly 100 years ago and they produced good radio equipment. But, many of them couldn’t compete with the newer hardware that was being produced in Japan. Hammerlund and Hallicrafters produced what have been nicknamed as “boat anchors”. They were big, bulky, and heavy and they used vacuum devices.
With the newer solid-state radios, those companies couldn’t compete with brands such as Kenwood, Yaesu, and ICOM. In order to do that, H & H would have had to extensively re-design their products and that cost far too much money, particularly since hams are a rather small market.
Many of the older “boat anchor” companies eventually got out of the amateur radio business, focusing, instead, on markets such as government and the military. One can find their products on many swap-and-shop second-hand websites and at flea markets.
But, amateur radio kits are still being produced. For example, QRP Labs, located in the U. K., makes a variety of ham gear, while HF Signals, based in India, has a selection of kits.
I built a HeathKit VTVM as a high school project.
That was some 50 years ago now.
My senior year in College I assembled a Heathkit H-19 terminal (VT-52 clone +). It actually only took a few evenings for a software engineer, borrowing some tools (and bench space) from a friend. That a CS type could do that from their directions spoke well of said directions and kits. I did pop one internal fuse (luckily, 3 were supplied) due to a minor miswire at the power supply. I also got a lovely shock when I forgot to ground out the CRT and managed to ground it through my elbow and right hand. That REALLY hurt.
My dad built a ham radio from Heathkit. Every night at 6pm he would chat with his brother, who was 600 miles away in Atlanta.
A good video, a few mispronouncing of words, but a good video. Lots of memories for me about Heathkit. The company was resurrected in the last few years, but a shadow of their past.
I guess I was part of the last generation to build their kits. Taking electronics in high school, I built the Zenith-Heathkit laser, and it was fun. There were other kits out there that were cheaper or you could get the projects in Popular Electronics, Electronics Now, 73, and QST. You just had to go through your boxes of parts, scavenge, hit the parts stores (Radio Shack), or order them by mail.
They mentioned SMT parts as a reason, but it was also the cost of labor in the Far East was cheap, and board design was getting smaller with multi-layered boards. I will come right out and say it, Americans did not want or desire to build their own electronics in the 90’s. A year after I took the electronics class in H.S., they canceled it. No students, no demand.
Those classes and projects helped me get my ham radio license, my technician degree, and finally my engineering degree. In college I built the Heathkit weather station for a guy. One of my co-workers mentioned in his H.S. electronics that built the Heathkit HERO robot, which cost a lot of money in the 80’s and fetches a pretty penny now. People spend a lot of money for unbuilt Heathkit projects, but there are not many.
I still have a number of Heathkit manuals. I have a working HW-8 CW radio, I have a working restored SB-220 amplifier, and I am working on restoring another SB-220 amplifier. I still love it.
Kits are sold by companies if you want to try your hand at it. Most of the engineering students who we hire have used/still use Arduino or mess around with Raspberry Pi computers with the boards. When I interview a candidate, if they list as their hobbies as ham radio, Arduino, working on cars, or woodwork, that shows that they have a genuine interest in engineering that is outside the job.
Like I said, a lot of memories flooding back. 73.
Things like this need to be preserved
I’m heartened by the fact that you can still buy some 3D printer kits in 2026 from Prusa in the EU. The board is assembled so of course there’s no soldering, but everything else comes in pieces. They also build kits and printers in the USA, but unfortunately there’s a surcharge to “buy local.”
“>>This bit of technological history forms a sad bookend to that of the Cox .049 engine evening pause from several weeks ago.<<".
Mr. Z.,
A sad bookend ? I think not.
Technological History will never have a "sad bookend", it cannot. For it is ever changing without end.
From a small "glow plug", to a soldering iron, to an ion drive, to …….
No, I do not believe in sad bookends within tech history.
Not even to, and beyond, "chop sticks" grabbing a space ship.
Endless.
Well almost.
What is that man on the right looking at in his hand? We know it’s not a phone, or even a PDA. His appointment book?