My dad got the first one in our neighborhood.
Everyone came by to see the color snow between channels
The vacuum tubes were pushed hard in the Color sets, the horizontal gain or whatever, they wore out quick. There used to be a TV/Radio repair shop on every corner. I remember dad carrying me in his arm and we’d test the tubes at the Drugstore on their handy dandy U-Chek-It tube tester. He’d set the voltages up and let me press the “test” button. Great teamwork.
Before solid state took over completely they had hybrid sets, with Selenium rectifiers. When those failed, everybody knew it, a really bad, bad, acrid metallic smell, stink up the whole house. I remember the Apollo 11 landing, the “Live From Moon” graphic, and everyone telling me to shutup. Seems to me they landed sometime around 9 or 10 Central time at night, or maybe that was the moonwalk. It took them a while to depressurize the cabin so they could open the door. Had to get Mom to sign off on letting me stay up late.