Heathkit is the brand name of kits and other electronic products produced and marketed by the Heath Company.

The company announced in 2011 that they were reentering the kit business after a 20-year hiatus but then filed for bankruptcy in 2012,[2] and under new ownership began restructuring in 2013.

As of 2022[update], the company has a live website with newly designed products, services, vintage kits, and replacement parts for sale.

[8] In 1935, Howard Anthony purchased the then-bankrupt Heath Company, and focused on selling accessories for small aircraft.

In the case of Heathkit's most expensive product at the time, the Thomas electronic organ, building the kit version represented substantial savings.

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, with the assurance of a predictable finished product; many Heathkit model numbers 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.

In the case of electronic test equipment, Heathkits often filled a low-end entry-level niche, giving hobbyists access at an affordable price.

[citation needed] The instruction books were regarded as among the best in the kit industry, being models of clarity, beginning with basic lessons on soldering technique, and proceeding with explicit step-by-step directions, illustrated with numerous line drawings; the drawings could be folded out to be visible next to the relevant text (which might be bound several pages away) and were aligned with the assembler's viewpoint.

"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.

This system included 256 bytes of RAM, a 1k monitor in ROM, and a keypad for easy entry and modification of programs.

Zenith purchased Heath for the flexible assembly line infrastructure at the nearby St. Joseph facility as well as the R&D assets.

The machine featured advanced (for the day) bit mapped video that allowed up to 640 x 225 pixels of 8 color graphics.

[17] Also, while their assembly was still an interesting and educational hobby, kits were no longer less expensive than preassembled products;[19] BYTE reported in 1984 that the kit version of the Z-150 IBM PC compatible cost $100 more than the preassembled computer from some dealers, but needed about 20 hours and soldering skills to assemble.

), and mass production of electronics (especially computer manufacturing overseas and plug-in modules) eroded the basic Heathkit business model.

[10]: 152–153 As sales of its kits dwindled during the decade, Heath relied on its training materials and a new venture in home automation and lighting products to stay afloat.

In late 2008, Heathkit Educational Systems sold a large portion of its physical collection of legacy kit schematics and manuals along with permission to make reproductions to Don Peterson,[22] though it still retained the copyrights and trademarks, and had pointers to people that could help with the older equipment.

[25] An extensive FAQ accessible from their homepage stated clearly that Heathkit was back, and that they would resume electronic kit production and sales.

[26] On October 8, 2015, Heathkit circulated an email to its "insiders", who had indicated an interest in the company's progress by completing its online marketing survey.