I loved when the TV repairman would come and open up the big case with all the boxes of tubes in them.
I recently saw one of those old cases, still fill of dusty tubes, in an antique shop.
Today you just sit the malfunctioning TV out on the curb and go buy a new one.
I look at the rust belt and all those "displaced" workers and think they used to make good auto parts now they are idle and we get Chinese junk.
Over the ten year life of our RCA console TV from the early 1950s to the early 1960s, my parents probably shelled out for tubes and service calls the same amount of money they paid originally for the TV, around $400. That would be about $2000 today. Yeah, the good old days ...
Not everyone could afford a TV repairman. When our TV would fail, I would take out all the vacuum tubes. walk over to the Safeway grocery store and test all the tubes. Most chain stores had vacuum tube testers. I would buy replacement tubes and get the TV going again. Then TVs started appearing with transistor components instead of tubes. Old style TV sets with vacuum tubes were showing up at Salvation Army and Goodwill stores for a couple dollars apiece (or less). The newer transistor TVs couldn't be repaired as easily, and most people would toss them out if they failed.
The funny thing I heard about the old vacume tube stuff is that they are immune to EMPs.
Dunno if that is true or not. But I do know this, any old car/pickup with generators, etc, will run. That includes old farm tractors and so on.
But then again, the power grid will be zapped so..
I remember as a kid going to Thrifty drug stores with my dad and testing all the tubes from the TV using a GE machine there to find out which one was bad and buying the replacement. It used to be almost as easy to repair your own TV as changing a light bulb.