Alessandro Volta’s was born on February 18th, 1775. He is known for several great discoveries, including the Voltaic Pile, which is an early type of battery. In the spirit of experimenting with electricity, I decided to check out the EX-150 by Gakken. I have used a lot of electronic learning kits, and this is by far my favorite. Gakken kits are always really well made and the EX-150 is no exception.
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The Gakken EX-System is a series of educational electronics kits produced by Gakken in the late 1970s. The kits use denshi blocks (also known as electronic blocks) to allow electronics experiments to be performed easily and safely. Over 25 years after its original release, one of the main kits from the series was reissued in Japan in 2002 and now you can get it here! Instruction Manual Included is in Japanese. English PDF Instructions available.
In the Maker Shed: EX-150 Electronic Experimental Kit
12 thoughts on “Maker Birthdays: Alessandro Volta & the EX-150”
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As a kid I had the EX-100 Electronic Blocks set and it got me interested in electronics at a young age. Building my own circuits became a challenge because you had to be creative with some of the parts. When this was reissued I bought one just to get a chance to play with the circuits I couldn’t when younger.
I’m glad to see that there are English instructions since the instructions that I have are all in Japanese.
How different is the original ex-100 from this kit? I wish I had one of these when I was a kid. I had other electronics kit, but this one is a lot better.
I couldn’t tell a difference in the blocks themselves. I couldn’t resist the urge to take the unit apart because the amplifier and speaker module are built into the kit, in the original it could be pulled out since there were versions that didn’t use it.
The only major difference between the EX-100 and EX-150 is that the EX-100 stopped at experiment 100. There was no CdS cell or meter.
Cool, thanks for the info. I would assume you could add the CdS cell & meter so you could do all 150 of the experiments.
I can’t remember if there were connections for the CdS and meter or not, but I’m sure you could add some. Also, the EX-100 had fewer blocks so I’m not sure that you could do all 150 experiments. My memory is kind of rusty as to which blocks were in the original.
I think RadioShack sold a version for a while.
I had one a short time, but passed it on after I moved on to the breadboard, protoboard, and soldering iron.