And here I thought ours was the only family in America where Dad refused to get a color TV when they first came out....
We were one of the first to get a TV. It was a large B&W. Unfortunately we were slow to get color. Probably not too bad since early color TVs were bad.
I can remember us watching TV and it would go out. Daddy kept a box full of tubes. He would take the back off the TV and replace the bad one and the TV would come back on.
I have no idea how long ago they replaced tubes with circuit boards.