> I got to know this man, whose name was Larry Lang, and he taught me a lot of electronics. He was great. He used to build Heathkits. Heathkits were really great. Heathkits were these products that you would buy in kit form. You actually paid more money for them than if you just went and bought the finished product, if it was available. These Heathkits would come with these detailed manuals about how to put this thing together, and all the parts would be laid out in a certain way and color coded. You’d actually build this thing yourself.
> I would say that gave one several things. It gave one an understanding of what was inside a finished product and how it worked, because it would include a theory of operation. But maybe even more importantly, it gave one the sense that one could build the things that one saw around oneself in the universe. These things were not mysteries anymore. I mean, you looked at a television set, and you would think, “I haven’t built one of those—but I could. There’s one of those in the Heathkit catalog, and I’ve built two other Heathkits, so I could build a television set.” Things became much more clear that they were the results of human creation, not these magical things that just appeared in one’s environment that one had no knowledge of their interiors. It gave a tremendous degree of self-confidence that, through exploration and learning, one could understand seemingly very complex things in one’s environment. My childhood was very fortunate in that way.
> It gave one an understanding of what was inside a finished product and how it worked, because it would include a theory of operation.
My Dad would get Heathkit and I would build them. I even built 3 H-151 (IBM compatible) computers. My soldering skills were pretty good. But I didn't understand how they worked - I just followed the instructions.
When I was a kid, around 5 years old, back in 1976, we got our first home game console. It was a Heathkit Pong clone, with variants for a couple related games, including duck hunt.
> First, it requires a Heathkit TV set to operate because of its composite output. Back in 1976, only monitors and hi-tech equipment had a composite input. To use this system, the user had to open his TV set in order to connect a few wires to its electronic circuits. This is the case with the Heathkit TV sets: the user manual explains how to connect the system to several TV sets released by Heathkit. The system has another interesting feature: the sound does not come from the system itself like most of the other PONG consoles, but comes from the TV set
> I didn't understand how they worked - I just followed the instructions
Indeed, Heath's instructions took a paint-by-numbers approach that did not offer analysis or explanation, so I have to disagree with hypertexthero that more than very basic theory was communicated. As for circuitry explanation, I found out the hard way on one occasion that I hadn't soldered a transistor properly, but there were no instructions on how to test for such a problem within the same "anyone can do this on a kitchen table" kit, so I mailed the board to Heath and they sent it back in working order for a small fee and postage. It is nevertheless a fond memory.
It’s been a looong time since I made a Heathkit (I think the last one was an oscilloscope in the 80s) but I do remember a theory of operation section in the manual, separate from the very clear assembly instructions. It’s true of the ones I randomly checked in the archive [0]. That said, the mail-in repair service for when things go sideways was a fantastic feature that not many kit companies had/have.
The first H-151 I built had a flaw. We went to the Heathkit store, about 45 minutes away, which provided the instructions for the fix. It was something like "scratch this trace off the circuit board and solder a wire between these two points."
"Also, I'm going to do everything I can to stop you from 'making something wonderful' with my own company's products. It was irresponsible for Heathkit to put high-voltage electronic equipment into the hands of the common folk. Someone could get shocked, or burn themselves with a soldering iron. And those Heathkit people didn't even bother to invent proprietary screws, so any kid with a quarter-inch nutdriver could take the cover off and get a face full of X-rays. No, not for us."
It is really interesting to think about what the version of Jobs who talked so reverently about those kits would have thought if he were shown the Apple "what is a computer" ad from a few years ago.
Jobs was certainly an inspirational entrepreneur and CEO but he always talked out of both sides of his mouth. He'd mug for the cameras and say all of that lofty stuff about creativity, bicycles for the mind, etc., and then go back to the office for a knock-down, drag-out fight with Woz about whether the Apple ][ should come with expansion slots or a padlock.
In business terms, Heathkit isn't something that he would have respected as anything but an unscalable niche hobby. Sucks that he would've been right about that.
Be careful what you wish for, Apple Corporate might make a "Tinkering Program" where they ship you a flight case full of $40,000 worth of oscilloscopes and GPIO for a weekend so you may implement your idea. Only if you're okay paying 30% royalties on your invention of course, where would you be without their generous help after all?
> I got to know this man, whose name was Larry Lang, and he taught me a lot of electronics. He was great. He used to build Heathkits. Heathkits were really great. Heathkits were these products that you would buy in kit form. You actually paid more money for them than if you just went and bought the finished product, if it was available. These Heathkits would come with these detailed manuals about how to put this thing together, and all the parts would be laid out in a certain way and color coded. You’d actually build this thing yourself.
> I would say that gave one several things. It gave one an understanding of what was inside a finished product and how it worked, because it would include a theory of operation. But maybe even more importantly, it gave one the sense that one could build the things that one saw around oneself in the universe. These things were not mysteries anymore. I mean, you looked at a television set, and you would think, “I haven’t built one of those—but I could. There’s one of those in the Heathkit catalog, and I’ve built two other Heathkits, so I could build a television set.” Things became much more clear that they were the results of human creation, not these magical things that just appeared in one’s environment that one had no knowledge of their interiors. It gave a tremendous degree of self-confidence that, through exploration and learning, one could understand seemingly very complex things in one’s environment. My childhood was very fortunate in that way.
— https://stevejobsarchive.com/book