If you’re old enough you might remember seeing one of these in a drug store, grocery store or even Radio Shack. You could pull all the tubes from your radio or TV, put them in a paper bag, and take them down to your local store to test. And hopefully you wrote down which one came out of which socket. Once you found the bad tube or tubes, the store proprietor would unlock the bottom and find new replacement tubes. And the price list is taped right inside the door.

https://www.morningstarobs.com/drug-store-tester.html

  • xmanmonk
    link
    English
    25 months ago

    I remember using these. You didn’t have to write down which tubes went where because the store had a sheet of stickers in number pairs, one for the tube, and the matching sticker for the socket.