Restoring the Original Heathkit – The K-1 AM “All-Wave” Receiver
The K-1 medium-wave and shortwave AM radio was Heathkit’s first electronics kit, offered from 1948 through 1949.1 The Heath Company itself, though, goes back to the early 1900s when it manufactured and sold airplane kits.2
Edward Bayard Heath designed and built a series of aircraft starting in 1909 with a Bleriot-inspired monoplane. Heath purchased the Chicago-based Bates Aeroplane Company in 1912, founding the E.B. Heath Aerial Vehicle Co., later becoming the Heath Airplane Company. His company produced the Heath Feather and Heath Favorite after World War I, and later the Heath Parasol series of aircraft powered with Henderson motorcycle engines.
Some years after Heath’s death (in an unfortunate airplane testing accident in 1931), the company was eventually purchased and after World War II, changed its product line to kit electronics. It went through a variety of owners over the years In 2019, a successor company established a live website at <>. According to its website, Heathkit is back in business, making a limited line of electronics kits and offering a variety of interesting products and services. Heathkit’s early success and profitability, along with electronics hobby kit affordability, was undoubtedly founded on its designs around abundant supplies of war surplus NOS (New Old Stock) electronics components that were readily available from government auctions and sales for pennies on the dollar.
