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Gakken EX-System


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.

A brief timeline:

An EX-System kit consists of:

A denshi block (or electronic block) is a small plastic box containing an electronic component. Each block has conductive metal strips on its sides, and when two blocks are placed side-by-side, their metal strips touch allowing electricity to flow between them. The top of each block is labelled with a schematic representation of the component it contains.

A circuit is built by placing a configuration of denshi blocks in a two dimensional . Because of the two dimensional layout and the labels on the blocks, a configuration of blocks resembles a schematic of the circuit.

While most denshi blocks are of a standard size, there are some larger blocks for containing complex components. In particular, the synthesiser block and the FM tuner block are much larger, occupying an area 4x5 standard blocks and 3x6 standard blocks, respectively.

The main unit holds the grid of blocks (it has room for 6×8 standard blocks), batteries and some additional circuitry. When fully expanded, the main unit contains:

Some circuits require apparatus which are unsuitable for putting inside blocks, for example, a crystal earpiece. These have wires which terminate in flat metal contacts, and they are connected to the circuit by sliding the contacts between the metal strips of two neighbouring blocks.

Some experiments also involve non-electrical apparatus, for example, the optical fibres from the optical experiments kit. The optical fibres are connected via a special block.


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