Plug Is Pulled on Heathkits, Ending a Do-It-Yourself Era
(Early nineties article on HEATHKITS)
Plug Is Pulled on Heathkits, Ending a Do-It-Yourself Era
by LAWRENCE M. FISHER, nytimes.com
Before there were nerds, before there was a Silicon Valley, there were Heathkits, which let tens of thousands of ambitious amateurs and aspiring engineers build their own radios, televisions and other electronic equipment.
But this month, after 45 years in the business, the Heath Company is closing out the last of its kits to concentrate on faster-selling home-improvement products and educational materials. Heath’s kit sales have steadily declined since 1981, victims of reduced leisure time, declining prices that make it cheaper to buy fancy radios and electronic equipment than to build them, and the seduction of technically oriented consumers by personal computers.
If the end of Heathkits is on one level simply a sound business decision, on another it is also the passing of an American institution that fostered learning-by-doing in its finest form. As one-hour film processing displaces the home darkroom, and inscrutable fuel-injection systems stymie the sidewalk auto mechanic, so goes do-it-yourself electronics. Lost Art of Soldering
No more will fathers teach sons how to solder at the kitchen table. (Heathkit builders were more than 95 percent male.) No more will boys pass the Heath catalogue around like contraband during science class. And no more will proud Heathkit owners announce “I built that,” when switching on the stereo.
Heath’s phasing out its kits “leaves the amateur, like me, no place to turn,” said former Senator Barry Goldwater, who used to fly to Heath’s headquarters in Benton Harbor, Mich., twice a year in his private plane to buy kits.
“It’s just that people today are getting terribly lazy, and they don’t like to do anything they can pay someone else to do,” said Mr. Goldwater, 83 years old, who has managed to wire up more than 100 Heathkits. “I think the current generation is certainly missing out.”
It was not uncommon for Heathkit loyalists to exceed the 100 mark, and many say the amplifiers and other gear they assembled decades ago are still in daily use. Longtime Heath customers say they are saddened by the company’s withdrawal from the kit business, and some are hoarding kits for their children or grandchildren to build.
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