![[Anthony] holding the EE8 kit](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/EE8-banner.jpg?w=800)
Back in 1966, a suitable toy for a geeky kid was a radio kit. You could find simple crystal radio sets or some more advanced ones. But some lucky kids got the Philips Electronic Engineer EE8 Kit on Christmas morning. [Anthony Francis-Jones] shows us how to build a 2-transistor AM radio from a Philips Electronic Engineer EE8 Kit.
According to [The Radar Room], the kit wasn’t just an AM radio. It had multiple circuits to make (one at a time, of course), ranging from a code oscillator to a “wetness detector.”
The kit came with a breadboard and some overlays for the various circuits, along with the required components. It relied on springs, friction, and gravity to hold most of the components to the breadboard. A little wire is used, but mostly the components are connected to each other with their leads and spring terminals.
[Anthony] makes the 2-transistor radio, which continues from an earlier 1-transistor radio. The first components wired in are for the front panel: the potentiometer, variable capacitor, and power switch. Next, the spring terminals are clipped into place. The capacitors and resistors are installed. Then the diode is installed. The transistors are installed. The rest of the passive components and the various wires are installed. There is a technique for attaching the wires to the components using small springs to hold the wires in place. Finally, the “ferroceptor” is installed, and some batteries.
The whole apparatus is taken outside where a long wire antenna and an earth connection are connected to the circuit, but, alas, there wasn’t much of an AM signal to be received. [Anthony] tries again at nighttime and gets slightly better results, but only marginally.
You were a lucky kid to get one of these back in 1966. Maybe in 1967, you could be a radio engineer. If you are impressed with the EE8’s breadboard, you’d probably enjoy making one of these.
I had this exact kit and it’s arguably what set me on the path to be a lifelong EE!
Me too!!!
Add me to that list. I also had the Radio Shack 50-In-1 kit, but I actually preferred this one.
I was lucky enough to be given the Gakken EX-150 kit of Denshi blocks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denshi_block) – an absolutely incredible educational toy.
I had a different version of the same kit. Now I work for the semiconductor descendants of Philips > 50 years later !
Me three!
I also got one of those as a kid and it also started me in Electronics attending college much later. I recollect the Radio for me worked fine in Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
Too Ritzy for me, I had to wing it. Making my own detectors via lead formed crystals. Lead was definitely in house paint. You could utilize a chip of that peeling off somewhere around the house. And can’t forget platinum razor blades. What a fun time 60s and 70s.
I was one of the lucky kids thanks to my father. Now I’m a retired electronic engineer but I remember well the Philips game. It all started for me.
Cool! I had a Tandy/Radio Shack one back in the ’70s.
So did I. It required calibrating the components and included instructions on how to do a fairly good calibration by ear (without a scope).
I had all three kits: the diode receiver, the one transistor and this one! This was second half of the sixties. It were starters for me.
I had an EE20, with more components and 20 circuits. I still have a few of the components, plus an EE8 I bought for old times’ sake.
The manual was impressive and well thought out. The top half (literally) of the book was theory of the components and how they worked in the circuit. The bottom half was the practice how of to assemble and use the circuit.
It struck exactly the right tone, and was a useful “enabler” :)
…yes..interphone..organ…with AC126 and AF116..
Had one of these as a 9 yr old. Went on to have a lifetime career in radio engineering, firstly with the British Army, Royal Signals then later with Marconi. Although I later diverted to IT and more generalised electrical work, the start given me by this kit never left me.
Same here
I built Heathkit project kits when I studied electronics from a corrrespondence school. That was the National Technical Schools in the USA in early 70s. Two of six projects I built slowly by lessons are a 12-inch B/W television and a 6-transistor radio. The radio started with a crystal receiver, progressed to one-transistor to six. Awesome learning adventure at the time.
I had a Yugoslav version of such a kit when I was 12 or 13 and it surely set me on a path on which I stood my whole life. Now retired, I remember these enthusiastic geeky days with nostalgy.
Too funny turned 70 this year I remember one of these and then I went out and built a superheroine receiver. The things you do when you’re stuck in the Northwoods in Michigan a bored 13 year old.
…had a Philips “Experimentierkasten” in the 80s, and, of course, Fischer Technik.
I can still remember asking a friend whether he’d be doing ICs already since I was still “stuck on transistors”. And, yes, I became an EE at a time when such education was still widely offered here in Germany (“Informationselektroniker”). The modern makey-makey breadboard drawings are kind of saddening, though I appreciate the effort and re-born interest in basic electronics. Anyway, life is not the same after having blown up a 470µF Capacitor on mains (your desk isn’t either).
Ohh… Fischer Technik. I still have it.
For me it started with the IC digital Practicum. That was my path to Electrical Engineering in Delft and my path to software engineering.
Still maintaining a substantial hardware engineering hobby.
These and the Radio Shack springy kits were pretty fun. The ones that should (still) be shamed is Tree of Knowledge. It took me a decade to get past that shitty kit with self built breadboard, var cap, var res, and all other 8000 complaints I have about their quality and usability. To this day, if I see one of the Tree of Knowledge kits in a thrift store, I buy it and take it home, take the components out, and throw the rest away so that no other kid out there has to deal with their crap.
I had the EE8 and also the A20 add-on kit to make it an EE20. It created an interest in electronics that led to a 38-year career of teaching the subject at University.
No mention of the transistors used?
An excellent design challenge is what you can do with one transistor.
My Radio Shack Science Fair 100-in-1 kit did amazing with that, used Toshiba 2SB56 circa 1972. The cartoons explaining what the transistor was doing kept me in electronics, as a kid.
https://radioshackcatalogs.com/flipbook/m-science_fair_kits_100-in-1_electronic_project_kit_28-220.html
Warning! This website attempts to install WebGL trojan.
Proof?
https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/https/radioshackcatalogs.com/flipbook/m-science_fair_kits_100-in-1_electronic_project_kit_28-220.html
They were ACxxx Philips germanium transistors as I remember…
The transistors were AF116 and AC126.
My friend Hugh got the EE8 and A20 for Christmas in 1963-4. We built an intercom and run two wires down the stairs , slipping a loud speaker into the room our parents were using. We sat upstairs listening to what was going on. The next Christmas I got the EE20 , building the 3 transistor radio on the board into a leather carry case. I spent almost 45 years in electrical and electronics in the Newspaper industry.
I had a kit by “Schuko”, I think they were relabeled Phillips kits. That contained an FM stereo demodulator IC and if you gave it just a little more voltage to the bar cap, it could be tuned to listen to 4 meter police radio. That was quite nice at the time…
It was the ubiquitous 1 transistor radio circuit which did it for most of us and set us on a career path …even without a Philips Kit. Our Science teacher had us producing cride PC circuit boards with ferric chloride and squeezing the radio into a small plastic soap box!
I had one of these when I was a kid! I took the electronic organ to school for the music teacher to tune.
THIS IS SUPER COOL! I WANT ONE! Yes I am shouting.
Enjoyed your video, love your descriptions and owning your errors!
As for the Comma, growing up writing 1.500,00 for 1500 it always made sense to me as the important part is the separation between whole numbers and the fractional part, and so using the larger comma there and small dots only for readability made sense. But it ends up what you are used to.
Much more annoying are billions. Or Hands and feet :D
But it is great to have lived most of my life enjoying cultural differences and peace!
Frank, thanks for this and your kind words. It was a fun video to make and I plan to do some more soon too. One coming up where I take it out into the ‘wilds’ and it performs rather better! Yes, the comma issue – exactly, it’s what you are trained to do that makes one prefer one method or the other! Best wishes, Anthony.
I saw this as a YT recommendation over the weekend.
[Anthony] ought to have used new electrolytics. The loopstick wiring seemed in doubt. The performance was submarginal.
(I would have photocopied the circuit map and used some brass nails, instead of the springs, on a bit of plywood and soldered it up.)
Thanks PJ. I wanted to use as much of what was in the original box as possible and the electrolytics on testing still seem OK! I am going to publish a video soon of me taking it well away from centres of population and it is remarkable how well it worked then! Still, it was great what could be achieved with this old kit from the 1960s with no modern modifications. Agreed I need to do a video explaining the circuit for this type of regen. radio. Thanks for watching, Anthony.
I had an EE8 for xmas when I was 8. Brilliant, I learned so much as my previous experience was with crystal sets. I remember winding coils for Long Wave as well as the 160m trawler band on which you could hear ship to shore and Ham operators. A lifetime in technology has followed, I’m still building bespoke computer systems, designing on offs, and restoring Tube equipment from the 50’s.
Had a similar kit 30 years ago.. brings back some great memories!
Like others, I had the same kit but the AF116 transistors failed. I couldn’t get them anywhere only the AF117, which didn’t work. My father, wrote to Philips and a few days later, they sent me half a dozen replacements for free. Fantastic service, which I still recall 60 yrs later.
I was lucky enough to receive the EE20 version, the gateway drug that led to degrees in Electrical Engineering from two top UK universities and seven years working on broadcast electronics. I moved into computers but maintained my links with electronics through teaching ham radio and hacking.
I got that kit in 1966! I’m in Toronto and I got it in Collingwood when on vacation.