; 90 years ago 1926 in saint joseph michigan usa website www.heathkit.com heathkit oscilloscope ol 1 1960s heathkit is the brand name of kits and other electronic products produced and marketed by the heath company . their products over the decades have included electronic test equipment high fidelity home audio equipment television receivers amateur radio equipment robots electronic ignition conversion modules for early model cars with point style ignitions and the influential heath h 8 h 89 and h 11 hobbyist computers which were sold in kit form for assembly by the purchaser . heathkit manufactured electronic kits from 1947 until 1992 . after closing that business the heath company continued with its products for education and motion sensor lighting controls . the lighting control business was sold around 2000 . the company announced in 2011 that they were reentering the kit business after a 20 year hiatus but then filed for bankruptcy in 2012 1 and under new ownership began restructuring in 2013 . as of 2015 update the company has a live website . contents 1 founding 2 heathkit product concept 3 heathkits as education 4 diversification and the digital era 5 kit era comes to a close 6 amateur radio 6.1 beginnings 6.2 early dx series transmitters 6.3 the heathkit tribes 6.3.1 apache mohawk chippewa seneca 6.3.2 cheyenne comanche 6.3.3 marauder warrior 6.3.4 vhf 6.4 a new novice station 6.5 the sb series and hw series 6.6 solid state and digital 7 see also 8 references 9 further reading 10 external links founding edit the heath company was originally founded as an aircraft company in 1912 by edward bayard heath with the purchase of bates aeroplane co soon renamed to the e.b. heath aerial vehicle co. starting in 1926 it sold a light aircraft the heath parasol in kit form . 2 heath died during a 1931 test flight . 3 the company reorganized and moved from chicago to niles michigan . 4 in 1935 howard anthony purchased the then 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 the o1 oscilloscope that sold for us 50 the price was unbeatable at the time and the oscilloscope went on to be a huge seller . 5 heathkit product concept edit 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 . 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 hw 101 hf transceiver became so ubiquitous that even today the hot water one oh one can be found in use or purchased as used equipment at hamfests decades after it went out of production . 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 . heathkit aa141 stereo preamplifier 1962 . 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 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 . 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 . 6 heathkits as education edit the wiring of a heathkit aa141 stereo preamplifier 1962 . 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 . for those builders who had a deeper knowledge of electronics or for those who wanted to be able to troubleshoot repair the product in the future the assembly manuals usually included a detailed theory of operation chapter which explained the functioning of the kit s circuitry section by section . 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 . heathkits could teach deeper lessons . the kits taught steve jobs that products were manifestations of human ingenuity not magical objects dropped from the sky writes a business author who goes on to quote jobs as saying it gave a tremendous level of self confidence that through exploration and learning one could understand seemingly very complex things in one s environment . 7 for much of heathkit s history there were competitors . in electronic kits allied radio an electronic parts supply house had its knightkits lafayette radio offered some kits radio shack made a few forays into this market with its archerkit line dynaco made its audio products available in kit form dynakits as did h. h. scott inc. fisher and eico ; and later such companies as southwest technical products . many cottage industries supplied less polished kits based on build it yourself articles in the electronics hobbyist press . few had anything comparable to the quality diversity polish and influence of the heathkits . diversification and the digital era edit after the death of howard anthony in 1954 heath was bought by daystrom company a management holding company that also owned several other electronics companies . daystrom was absorbed by oilfield service company schlumberger limited in 1962 and the daystrom schlumberger days were heathkit s most successful . those years saw some firsts in the general consumer market . the early 60s saw the introduction of the aa 100 integrated amplifier . this was a unit of reliable quality and affordable that was produced several years before any other major hi fi company produced anything comparable . the early 70s saw heath introduce the aj 1510 an fm tuner using digital synthesis and the gc 1005 digital clock . again these components were quality products and were produced well ahead of anyone else in the industry . 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 . 5 kits were compiled in small batches mostly by hand using roller assembly lines . these lines were put up and taken down as needed . some kits were sold completely assembled and tested in the factory . these models were differentiated with a w suffix after the model number . first 8 bit heathkit h8 computer collection www.yesterpc.org the last great flourish of the heathkit was probably the 1978 introduction of the heathkit h8 computer . the earliest home 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 h8 was very successful as were the h19 and h29 terminals and the h89 all in one computer . the h8 and h89 ran their custom operating system hdos and the popular cp m operating system . the h89 contained two zilog z80 processors one for the computer and one for the built in h 19 terminal . 8 the h11 a low end dec pdp 11 16 bit computer was less successful ; probably because 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 for 63 million 9 10 renaming the computer division zenith data systems zds . zenith purchased heath for the flexible assembly line infrastructure at the nearby st. joseph facility as well as the r & d assets . heath zenith was in the vanguard of companies to start selling personal computers to small business . the h89 kit was re branded as the zenith z 89 z 90 an assembled all in one system with a monitor and a floppy disk drive . they had agreements with peachtree software to sell a customized turn key version of their accounting cpa and real estate management software . shortly after the release of the z 90 they released a 5mb hard disk unit and double density external floppy disk drives . while the h11 was popular with hard core hobbyists heath engineers realized that dec s pdp microprocessors would not be able to get heath up the road to more powerful systems . heath zenith then designed a dual intel 8085 8088 based system dubbed the h100 or z 100 in preassembled form sold by zds . the machine featured very advanced for the day bit mapped video that allowed up to 640 x 512 pixels of 8 color graphics . the h100 was interesting in that it could run either the cp m operating system or their oem version of ms dos named z dos which were the two leading business pc operating systems at the time . although the machine had to be rebooted to change modes they could read each other s disks . in 1982 heath introduced the hero 1 robot kit to teach principles of industrial robotics . 11 the robot included a motorola 6808 processor ultrasonic sensor and optionally a manipulator arm ; the complete robot could be purchased assembled for 2495 or a basic kit without the arm purchased for 999 . this was the first