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Heathkit Educational Systems Closes Shop For Good
scharkalvin writes with this excerpt from the American Radio Relay League's site: "'For the second time since 1992, Heathkit Educational Services (HES) has shuttered its doors. Rumors of the legendary kit-building company's demise were posted on QRZ.com, with several readers bringing the news to the attention of the ARRL. In August 2011, Heathkit announced it was returning to the kit building business, and in September, that it would once again be manufacturing Amateur Radio kits. ... On LinkedIn, a popular networking site, HES Chief Executive Officer Lori Marciniak listed her employment ending at Heathkit as of March 2012. Likewise, Heathkit's Marketing and Sales Director Ernie Wake listed his employment ending in April 2012. An unsubstantiated report on Wikipedia states that "[in] December 2011, Heathkit Educational Systems laid off most employees and in March 2012, the company indefinitely suspended operations."' It looks like Heathkit is gone for good. Their plans on re-entering the kit market died with the current economy."
This is a sad day for education in America. I remember as a kid building stuff with HeathKit products. I guess no one wants to learn how things work and build them anymore. This, I would guess, is prime example of how education is dwindling. I am a proponent of lifelong learning too.
sorry to hear it, a lot of hams were eagerly awaiting product.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
It died because very few Americans have much interest in, knowledge of, or desire to learn about electronics any more.
Introduce an "Arduino Plus Projects" kit to compete with Sparkfun, etc, but the HeathKit name will give them a leg up. Then, once they're back on the shelves in Radio Shack, Fry's and Micro Center, the buyers there might be receptive to more original products.
Sad to see it go because it's kind of iconic of a culture who grew up to be scientists and engineers. Something really rare these days. The majority of kids these days are either out playing soccer or inside on the Xbox, DS or whatever. The majority have no more interest in Space than occasionally glancing up at the moon and no more interest in electrical engineering than how many gigs and how to plug it in.
I think kids were more fascinated with technology in the 70s because there wasn't much of it around. Even color TV wasn't mainstream. These days, kids are saturated with it. The thought of building something just doesn't appeal to them.
I don't think the market would have been there for Heathkit. The puttering around of a bunch of old geezers just isn't enough to run a company on.
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My HW101 and my 35mhz scope will be ophaned at last. Fond memories and fund times. That 100 watt radio let me talk with Sidney from Chicago like they were in the next room, and Argentina. That was wonderful and using the first microcomputer I built myself and turned into a terminal. Sigh
I still have my Heathkit MM1 VOM and it still works. I built an AR-series stereo tuner/amplifier and an auto tachometer diagnostic meter and a dash mounted nixie tube tach. I was too chicken to get the color TV kit (expensive). One lesson I learned during the tuner construction was not to have two color blind people helping to pick out the correct resistors.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
My guess is that Heath was already deep in red ink when they decided to re-enter the kit market. They probably wanted to ride the current maker movement. Maybe if their creditors had given them enough time they could have saved the company with new kit products. Just look at Adafruit.com, Evilmadscience.com, or Sparkfun.com and you will see that there IS a demand for kits. No one ever did kits better than Heath. I'm sorry to be the reporter of the bad news. RIP Heathkit.
I fondly remember my Heath-Zenith 100 kit computer. S-100 bus, CPM OS on 8-inch floppies. ...and salivating over the HERO robot kit.
I'd tell kids to get off my lawn...if only kids would play outside these days.
Interest in hobbyist computers is at a 20 year high. It's been 30 years since our favorite 8 bit PCs were current. People love new electronics that can replicate or interact with old electronics. The Apple II CFFA was sold out before it was even built. Same for the 1541U-II for the C64. Every time you turn around someone is selling a new reproduction like the minimig or c-one. The guys at AtariAge are planning an entirely new expansion module for the Atari 7800.
If all these people can make it work, why can't Heathkit?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
One thing that prompted me to going into E. Engineering was a heathkit Radio I built. I hope they can re-organize and come back! It's a tough market for that though.
Why they did not pivot into guided computer system builds of various kinds and levels of complexity is beyond me? Or if they did try that play they just botched it. Certainly I never saw any Heathkit ads in CPU or Maximum PC. Hams and early computerists enjoyed a lot of overlap. (Still do. My Linux Users Group has a strong ham radio element). They could have marketed both. Sorry Heathkit. FAIL. Poor brand migration strategy.
The reason this is sad is that a well-positioned company banked on its past glory. Another case in point: Kodak. RIP.
Case modification and system building is huge. And (sarcasm notwithstanding) customers would end up with something that did "play MP3s and You Tube". And there is lots of ham to PC hybridization so they could have stayed with radio as well in some guise. They could have been a contender.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
When Heathkit was in its heyday, the cost of assembly was a very large part of the cost of the product. With the advent of automated assembly, the labor cost became insignificant and a kit could no longer compete on price. In fact, the kit became MORE expensive because of the cost of developing a by-the-number assembly manual. The kit-building community kept Heathkit going even then for a while.
But I remember the last Heathkit I constructed. It was an FM radio tuner. The "kit" came with a palletized, pre-assembled circuit board. Instead of mounting parts and soldering, you snapped the various boards apart -- the interconnect cables were already attached -- assembled the chassis and screwed the boards in place. There were two solder connections -- for the power cord! And the "kit" was about 30% more expensive than a similar tuner from Radio Shack.
It's called progress.
This is one of the biggest detriments to Amateur Radio I've seen. Clinging to nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. Yes - it's cool and sentimental to hold on to the 'old ways'. Kind of fun too. But, it's not practical. And very difficult to keep viable from a business perspective.
You want to learn how things work? You fire up GNUradio and hack a flow-graph.
Got an idea? Same - you don't build it up on a perf board unless you're trying to re-invent the wheel - again.
Transceivers can be bought by the hand-full now - they are the 'new' discreet components.
Memories are cool. Nostalgia is what it is. But there are very real reasons why the majority of people no longer shoe their own horses, spin their own yarn or dry their own tobacco in the shed out back. Crap, most don't even have sheds anymore.
Not at all surprising that a business built on an dead model didn't survive. Deal with it.
Maybe they will release their manuals to the public for free now. That has been my biggest gripe with Heathkit - You can't download their manuals from any of the "BAMA" type websites.
I don't know if the market would have been there.
I used to dabble with transmitters when I was 16-17. Very cool, since that was at a time just before the internet and it made my world a whole lot bigger all of a sudden. Today, I can talk to anyone on the planet over the intertubes...
Similarly, I recently wanted to receive NOAA satellite images. I got a cheap digital tuner dongle, installed GNU radio on linux and built a cool antenna. No need to buy a kit anywhere.
Also recently, I wanted to build a device around a PIC micro controller. I was able to find all of the information on line, draw a professional dual layer PCB in KiCad and have it made at a very low cost. No need for kits either here.
I say the kit is dead. As much as I like building things and the idea of kits, now I can build from scratch with all of the information at my fingertips or use of the shelf hardware and a linux PC.
Surely the name and brand are worth SOMETHING. Hasn't anyone purchased the rights to the name or logo?
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
My father was an electrical engineer, and some of my best early childhood memories were playing with two Heathkit breadboards. It was a thrill to watch things work after following the wiring instructions. I even hooked wires between the two breadboards to do things (so epic!). The real bonus was when I connected the oscilloscope to it. I spent hours randomly creating all sorts of patterns by just randomly wiring things around!
If I have kids, you can bet I'll look for the modern equivalents.
This is a huge generalization and not true in my experience. I've been at a few events (birthday parties, etc...) with my 5 year old where the kids have built stomp rockets and all sorts of other things. They love it. I think the comments about other readily available options (legos, computer programs, etc...) are more on target.
What annoys me is that a Zuckerberg or a Simonyi or a Cameron could bankroll Heathkit, one of the root enablers of geekdom and a true part of technical history in the US, for less than they spend on tropical fish, and for less of their attention than merely uttering the phrase "make it happen".
Yes, I know, Heathkit chose bad timing to reenter the kit business. They should have laid low, held onto their IP, and waited until the economy was on an upswing. And no company is too big, or too small, or too geeky, to fail. But surely Heathkit deserves more.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
There are a few companies still left, I've built a couple of Ramsey Kits (http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/), and I've lusted for an Elecraft radio (http://www.elecraft.com/k2_page.htm) for quite some time. But Heathkit was the original legend. Sad to see it go....
, with lots of preassembled PC boards and the like. The last few TV kits they offered (after Zenith bought them out), were simply a Zenith "System 3" set with all of the modules shipped loose. Spend 30 minutes snapping boards into place and plugging a few cables in, and you had the same exact set you could have bought already assembled for $100 cheaper from the local appliance store.
Your FM tuner was most likely the same kind of deal, a commercial model sold without the "final assembly".
Using other company's designs probably dictated the preassembled nature of the product. Heathkit's older, original designs were made so that kits like TV sets or FM tuners could be aligned and tested after assembly using only rudimentary equipment that the typical hobbyist would have access to. The TV sets included built-in test pattern generators for performing the convergence setup, etc. The commercial designs were made to be aligned using automatic test equipment on an assembly line, so having the home builder do it was simply not feasible any more.
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I still use my H-19 terminal (as the tty console for my DEC Alpha).
Check out Ramsey Electronics sometime. I have build several of there kits with my kids. My only gripe with them is that they do not offer the source code for any of there microcontroller-based projects, and seemed to get offended when I asked.
At the time Heathkit stopped producing kits their kit business WAS profitable. Their executives just didn't want to be in that business anymore. They wanted to solely be an education company. At the time there were all sorts of articles stating this.
Here's a question, once they dropped the kits who was their customer?
Schools? Certainly not. Schools are busy teaching a state defined curriculum that does little more for teaching kids about technology and building things than would a lifetime spent finger painting. They weren't going to buy anything from Heath. If they thought schools were going to keep them in business then I would like to know what they were smoking!
Universities? Maybe... I don't know, any EEs out there want to speak up and say they did or did not use Heath materials in their classes? I'm guessing not As a CS major I never had a class with any sort of company provided program. It was just textbooks, mostly only read in certain parts and out of order following the professor's personal syllabus. Is EE different? Do universities use Heath for EE? Come on EE majors, respond and let me know!
Were they going to make a living selling courses to individuals? I haven't checked their offerings in quite a while and their site currently says to call for prices. When I did check some years ago I could have just about obtained a degree from an accredited university for the price. Why would anyone buy a course from Heath?
Was this the wrong time to get back into the kit business? I really doubt it. With the maker movement of today? Sure, most of society is very non-technical, non-geek preferring a night of brain-dead reality tv over building something but has it ever been any different? If you got in your Delorian and went back to the 50s when Heathkit was in it's prime do you really think you could pick any average person off the street, question them and expect to hear about the great new kit they assembled last Friday night? Yeah, right! But would you find anything like today's maker movement? People so into making that they commit to creating organizations with overhead like hackerspaces? I think this is a better time for a kit business then there has been in a long time, maybe ever. Heath came back with too little too late. Did they even really intend to succeed?
The mystery to me is what has kept Heath around all this time since they first discontinued kits? My suspicion is that nothing has. I don't think they were trying, I think they were just disassembling the company very very slowly so the money they made years ago could go into somebody's pocket without getting them in trouble. That's my theory anyway.
The problem is that people are willing to throw their money at imagined goods and services now, instead of going to the store and buying something interesting or useful. Case in point: App store, Google, Facebook.
music lover since 1969
That is wonderful, do you share your successes with parts lists and instructions anywhere?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Heathkits would imperil children. They'd be inspired to go on and build things of their own, but anything they'd make would violate 100 frivolous patents, so what's the point in inventing anything?
You already have the knowledge to do all of the things that you mentioned on your own. Kits are a "one stop" solution for others to learn these things; the kits easily address the inevitable "Where do I start?" question that curious novices will ask before beginning to learn.
Right. No, your other right. No, the other other right.
Just when I was going to sell my 75 watt transmitter that my father built for me in 1965. :(
As stated in another post: "At the time Heathkit stopped producing kits their kit business WAS profitable. Their executives just didn't want to be in that business anymore. They wanted to solely be an education company."
Problem is, Heath's educational stuff was always pretty lame. In audio and amateur gear, they really shone. And they made some really nice test gear, too. I still have my Heath Audio Oscillator, and the Distortion Analyzer. Neither was quite as good as an HP, but they were way less money, and were good candidates for hobbyist upgrades.
Their educational stuff was not only lame, but overpriced. The rest of their offerings were solid value. Even their PC-clone (808x, 1983 or so) was well done and good value.
I built Heathkits, so did my dad. I'd say they will be missed, but I have missed them since they bailed on the business that made them.
--- Bill
In the 70s I was the only child at my school that was interested in electronics, chemistry, etc. In the late 80s I went to a technical school (Dutch: HTS) and I was the only one in my class who already knew the resistor color codes, etc. So, no, in my experience there was certainly not a booming tech interest, were I lived (the Netherlands, close to the Hague).
As for now, my children grow up with a working-at-home dad who was interested in tech, etc. and still is. And nature. We have a very small library, but it has 20+ books on various animals, plants, rocks, minerals, fossils, dinosaurs, planes, photography, etc. My children, 5yo girl, 2yo boy, now and then browse through some of the books. They love the scholastic books on spiders, snakes, butterflies, beetles (highly recommended, by the way).
Right now, their favourite toy is Fisher Price Trio (recommended), the set I bought has various cogs. You can see my son having a lot of fun with a wind mill made with Trio and a fan. They both love to play with Trio and Duplo.
In short, I think it's still happening, at least in my house.
Perl Programmer for hire
the wax-ender filter caps used on countless scopes out of Heath were not reliable and shorted a lot. replace with epoxy-fill from some source like CDE, and as long as you didn't kill the transformer, you should have it fixed for good.
if you did kill the transformer, flip some filament transformer insulated to 1500 or 2500 volts backwards, feed from the AC line, and that will suffice.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
at our club, kids under 16 get free membership. half the membership is greyhairs, the rest are under 40.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I have had no trouble at all restoring any.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
There's always been brain dead and easy options for entertainment - and the type of kids who sought out Heathkits have always been in a distinct minority. The golden age you allude to never existed.
On top of which, as another poster said, kids that are interested in that kind of thing today have Mindstorm, or simulation games, or programming, or other things that weren't available back in Heathkit's heyday.
they sold duplication of their manuals a couple years ago, and the new owner has been assertive in getting the copy sites to take down their files. they did retain all rights to the manuals, however, so that is an asset in liquidation, assuming Heathkit doesn't get up again.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
And - that's always been true. There never was a golden age.
first, they had a lot of dust on the boxes in the warehouse. second, a major reason was that we as a society lost the ability to wait a little while for the new shiny, and lost the ability to work for it. you had to build a heathkit. it didn't come off the shelf in a shiny 4-color package and crackle with excitement as soon as you plugged it in. there was a lot of "install diode D134, insuring polarity band matches with the band on the circuit board. bend leads over and solder." check the box. "install transistor Q112, insuring tab matches the mark on the circuit board. bend leads over and solder." check the box. check the box at the bottom of the page. turn the page.
I think it was the "turn the page" part that people couldn't get around to any more.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
idiots on eBay have had heathkits bid up over the kit price in the 60s for months and months now. somebody listed an unbuilt 80s kilowatt amp a little bit ago, and the bids went up over $1800. the commercial equivalent of that is the 80B Ameritron, which new and built with a warranty doesn't cost that (and which was basically the prototype for the heathkit.)
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Goodbye Old Friend. I built everything from photoelectric light dimmers to tv's to test equopment to a Hero-1 robot. They will be sorely missed. I can still remember the smell when you opened one of the Heaathkit kit boxes. It was quite a uniqe smell. Then the thrill of looking at all of the parts and thinking man I can't wait to finish only to be disappointed when I finished and no more to do except go to the Heathkit store on Joppa Road in Towson, MD. and drool over what I would build next. Thanx for the many years of enjoyment I spend building and using the many kits i purchased. You will be missed.
Goodbye Old Friend. I built everything from photoelectric light dimmers to tv's to test equopment to a Hero-1 robot. They will be sorely missed. I can still remember the smell when you opened one of the Heaathkit kit boxes. It was quite a uniqe smell. Then the thrill of looking at all of the parts and thinking man I can't wait to finish only to be disappointed when I finished and no more to do except go to the Heathkit store on Joppa Road in Towson, MD. and drool over what I would build next. Thanx for the many years of enjoyment I spend building and using the many kits i purchased. You will be missed.
3D Printer
PVC Robot
Arial Drone
Solar Cell and Wind Turbine Home System
Hell, fire up my imagination, not my grandfathers.
I always wanted to build a Hero, sniff sniff.
how many different times have we heard the "once this gets made all problems will cease" mantra? then that device actually gets made, and what happens?
NOTHING.
this "savior" device ends up simply being a toy and the same problems still go on as usual. notice how people still are hungry, poor, killing each other? a device isn't gonna change this. only PEOPLE can change this.
There should at least be a sad video of someone walking down an empty, echoing corridor, under a sign that says 'Heathkit - Since 1926', turn and look back, sigh, flick off a light switch and close the door with a boom.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
There quality kept dropping,l and ther stoped doing interesting and relevant thiings.
They need to commit to something new and just run like hell with it. Going into 'course based education' was a mistake.
Kits I would have included:
Network Card. Firmware written but not compiled. Include compiler.
TV Card - Same
Computer case kit. Where you can built a smart sound and flashing led system
Universal remote.
Several Adrino kits.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think a lot of people would buy old heathkit designs, I know I would but I'm sure I'm not statistically significant, but only if they were genuinely inexpensive. I bet a lot of them just wouldn't be practical to offer any more.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ah, nostalgia aint what it used to be.
But back in reality, the maker movement is growing by leaps and bounds thanks to the information access and communication capabilities of the Internet. It's not like you have to go very far to find this stuff. There are at least a couple stories a week on Slashdot about Raspberry Pi, Arduino, or other random homebrew projects often made by or for the younger generation. There are http://hackaday.com/">blogs that specialize in DIY electronics projects which showcase youngsters regularly. Engineering courses regularly inspire kids to design and build impressive robots and original inventions. And finally, just in the last few years we've seen hackerspaces pop up in nearly every decent-size city in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and other countries. Hate to break it to you, but these places are rarely, if ever, full of puttering old geezers.
Here's what I use for NOAA pictures:
-rtl2832 based dongle get one with an E4000 tuner (gives you more frequencies to play with and do other stuff)
-Strip it from its case, put it in a metal box and add a preamp like here: http://users.belgacom.net/hamradio/schemas/preamp_HF_VHF_UHF_SHF_wideband_MAR6.htm
It can take power from USB. No regulator needed.
-Install GNU-radio (use the installer script) you will have to build a wideband FM demodulating radio
-Build a QHA antenna for 137MHz. (I built this one, works very well http://www.qsl.net/kf4cpj/qha/ )
Record the audio in GNU radio and import it into a wx sat decoder. Plenty of those around.
The PIC controller project was for a commercial device. So I don't share anything there.