AVR Freaks

Dont forget that those Heath scopes were current more than 60 years ago, not when some Chinese factory could  get away with building one thing under a dozen brands. 

I worked at Tek, then, and Tek would have been appalled at being associated with such stuff. There WAS a Sony-Tek joint venture to make low-cost scopes. They had small screens and were physically small (guessing front panels on the order of 20cm x 10cm). Tek was actually somewhat embarrassed by these things and let the Sony name dominate the front panel. There was also a joint venture, first on the Island of Guernsey (special status with both Great Britain and the just starting E.U.). Later, it was mostly in Heerenveen Netherlands. That was mostly over-seas assembly of components fabricated in Oregon. Never, as far as I know, was there any association with Heathkit. 

Now, don't get me wrong. For equipment designed for hobby users, in comparison to what else was out there, the Heath scope was not so bad. It just did not measure up to what Tek would have accepted.

There is also an old story, which I think is probably true. In the very early years, before HP started making scopes, Tek's biggest competitor was Dumont. A number of circuits of Tek scopes were patented. Dumont always seemed to come up with new features very similar to what Tek did, shortly after the Tek product came out. Tek was confident that Dumont was copying. So, they added a circuit that did nothing. There was high voltage, and ground, and one connection to something fairly innocuous. That same circuit showed up in a new Dumont scope. Tek sued, and Dumont could not respond adequately to the suit. They ended up going out of business shortly after. 

Heath scopes were after this little saga. Again, I really doubt that there was ANY relationship between Heath and Tek.

Jim