Ask nearly anyone today and they will readily explain that Ikea is the company with the fancy furniture that you assemble yourself from a kit. They are, at least as of 2008, the largest retailer of homebuilt furniture in the world. Pretty impressive, and a testament to the willingness of people to build things for themselves.
Another name is synonymous with building it yourself. Heathkit. Even those who are too young to have ever built any of their kits have quite possibly heard the name. Heathkit is most often associated with HAM radio products. The truth is, they made a very wide range of products. The amateur radio and electronic test equipment is certainly what they are most remembered for but they also made all manner of products– stereos, clocks, computers, automotive testing tools, educational products, home appliances……and yes, believe it or not, even furniture! All of these items were sold in kit form to be assembled by the proud owner.
Heath actually began in 1918 and sold small aircraft…later Mr Heath tried to market a homebuilt aircraft during late 1920’s. This was a failure, in fact Heath was killed in a plane crash in 1931, which is obviously bad for business when you are trying to sell kit planes. In 1935 the bankrupt company was purchased by an engineer named Howard Anthony. He mostly produced small aircraft parts and accessories and marketed a line of early aircraft radios that were supplied by Meissner. Most of the business from this point through WWII was from various government contracts. After the war, business dropped off sharply. In 1946, Heath split off the aviation division and began selling surplus. This was the start of the Heathkit that many recognize even today.
After the war, surplus was a way of life. Army-Navy Stores of various types sprang up almost everywhere selling all manner of stuff. Magazine articles were published through the 1950’s with various projects for building almost anything a person could ever want and many of these projects utilized surplus parts and hardware. When I was a kid I practically lived in a few such stores, the smells of grease, cosmoline, protective treatments, and mothballs bring back fond memories…..and it is a testament to the industrial capacity we once had that even as recently as the late 1980’s I was able to purchase WWII aircraft radios and parts that were still new in the original boxes almost five decades after they’d been built. It was so widespread and had cultural ramifications such that a book could be devoted to this aspect alone.
At this time, Heath found themselves sitting on a pile of war surplus Cathode Ray Tubes. Such CRT’s lent themselves to being incorporated into an oscilloscope. Heath realized that they were in a unique time: The company had a vast inventory of surplus electronic parts…the public had a craving for new products, especially technology (we had just been through a very science and technology oriented war and many developments were making their way into the public eye) …..and, Heath correctly realized that much of the cost of any high end electronic item was in the assembly….by allowing their customers to build it themselves they could undercut many others. And…as an added bonus, many such kits qualified as school projects for purposes of the GI Bill which many were now beginning to take advantage of to train for careers in the postwar technology boom that would eventually lead to space. It was a confluence of factors that positioned them in the right place at the right time. Heathkit, as they became known, began selling electronic project kits beginning with a scope, the O-1, made from war surplus parts.
Other products soon followed, Vacuum Tube Voltmeters, more scopes, shortwave receivers and transmitters, all manner of test equipment and amateur radio gear…..computers….home products, etc. All spanning some 4 more decades before they were out of the business.
Sure, other companies had sold electronic kits. Some did it from the dawn of radio. And still others did it in the postwar world in competition with Heathkit. And even today, some companies offer a limited range of kits. But no one did it on the scale that Heathkit did. The big secret to Heathkit’s success was not simply the end product that could be built or that everything needed was supplied with the kit. It was the instructions. Heathkit supplied a very detailed, step-by-step, well illustrated set of instructions. With even the most basic of prior experience it was possible to construct a kit and have it function as advertised. These instructions evolved as the product line developed. Comparing the instructions for a model V-2 Vacuum Tube Voltmeter, which was one of the earliest of offerings right after the initial oscilloscopes, one can see that while they are good they lack the sophistication of the manuals supplied with items from the mid 1950’s onward…yet even the early manuals showed the needed criteria to make anyone a successful builder.
In addition, they were marketed well….not only to those who wanted a cool item for their home but to the budding radio and TV technicians who would otherwise have not been able to afford the necessary tools to open their own shops….the hobby that could turn into a paying job and a long term career. If you can even find a TV repairman in today’s throw-away society, he or she will probably be old enough to have lived through some of this. Ask them how they got started and it is likely the name Heathkit will pop up somewhere in the conversation.
While Heathkit is gone, at least as we once knew them, many of the kits can still be found on the used market at hamfests, garage sales, and of course on eBay. (And now a shameless plug: check my auctions every now and again as I periodically have Heathkit items for sale…ebay username “airspy”)
As these were built many years ago by people whose skill levels varied widely, some may need more TLC than others to get working properly again. (often stuff like fixing bad solder joints) Some are rare and prized by collectors. Others are more common and still very useful as intended. The rarest and most valuable of all are any kits that somehow managed to remain completely sealed and unbuilt. The time capsules. They are the “holy grail” to collectors. I have had a few. As much as I wanted to open them and put them together, I resisted…knowing that I could find an example to restore for myself if I wanted and knowing that if I left them sealed I could pass them on to another eager collector. There are probably two kits they made that if I ever found a sealed example of I’d likely open and build them for the fun of it, resale value be damned. One is the clock that had the built in WWV receiver to synchronize to the NBS atomic clock, and the other is a shortwave receiver of the sort that got me started.
My first shortwave radio was a Heathkit. I purchased it at a garage sale when I was a kid. It was my first “real” introduction to radio and a world that was unknown prior to tuning across the dial and hearing distant voices in other languages. This helped cultivate skills and interests that remain with me to this day…….just as I am sure that building those kits did the very same for many returning GI’s in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s.
