Yes, well, the operative word was certainly not “small” and it certainly wasn’t “light”, either. In the 60’s I lived in northern NJ and used to take the bus or the Hudson Tube/PATH train into lower Manhattan to Radio Row, all of which was razed to build the WTC. I could spend all day there, there were dozens of surplus dealers and junk stores, and you could find literally any part you might want, so long as you were willing to spend the time to find it. It was paradise, for me. All the dealers there could gauge the expansion of a young lads’ eyes and quintuple the price if they saw the requisite amount of iris expansion.
We’re talking strictly tubes. The transistor stuff that was there was really primitive, and for the most part it had to mimic tube design or it wasn’t deemed credible as far as being a viable commercial product.
Many, many times I would buy some bedraggled 70 pound piece of pure crap and drag it home, and hopefully not slice the daylights out of my hands on the metal or the wiring. That was quite a task for a 12 year old.
Interestingly I saw analog of that in Korea - whole buildings devoted to electronics, very speciaised. Imagine selling computer power supplies, used, and nothing else.
I love his old stories about dragging radar sets home to his horrified mother