I remember the CK-722, the first transistor I got my hands on. Made a couple of neat little circuits, AF amps, RF keying monitors, etc.
You probably know this already, Phil, but in case not, there's a neat online museum dedicated to that transistor:
http://www.ck722museum.com/History, projects, sources, and more.
Fun fact: The CK-722 hit the market in early 1953, more than 5 years before the book mentioned above.
But transistors in those days scared the heck out a lot of the radio repair techs, and that, coupled with TV coming into full bloom, soon spelled the end for the typical radio repair shop.
I suspect that TV came first in that sequence - depended on where one was located. But yes, new technology brought many change. Still, tube TVs were being made well into the 1970s.
Of course that was back when "consumer" electronics were still made in the USA in great quantities.
Some years back, NR5Q did a series of articles about what it was like to run a radio repair shop/store in a small town in the years after WW2 and into the 1950s. First hand account. Running such a small business involved a lot of different skills and saw a lot of changes. I think the articles were in "Electric Radio".
Hams adopted transistors early on; the pages of QST, CQ, and other magazines had transistor projects in the early 1950s. My 1957 ARRL Handbook has a "semiconductor devices" chapter devoted mostly to transistors. But they were mostly used for special purposes and accessories because, for a typical amateur home station, those early transistors didn't offer many real advantages.
In mobile, portable, and test applications, however, even those early transistors had lots of amateur-radio uses. And some pioneering hams used them for receivers and low-power transmitters. The cover story in QST for May, 1956 is an all-transistor receiver covering the ham bands from 80 through 15 meters. But the Philco surface-barrier transistors used in some stages cost $6 each! (They were made right here in Philadelphia, btw).
OSCAR 1, the first Amateur Radio satellite, was of course all-solid-state.
There were also some cautionary tales involving amateur use of transistors. For example, in the early 1960s EF Johnson developed a revolutionary SSB transceiver called the Avenger. It was all-solid-state except for the final and driver tubes, had dual VFOs and many other features. But it cost something like $2000 to manufacture at a time when a KWM-2 was $1100 or so, and only about a dozen prototypes were made. EFJ lost a bundle on the Avenger, and it soured them on SSB and transceivers at precisely the time they should have gotten into the game.
The National HRO-500 was another example. Looked great, had good numbers - but in a competitive situation, like a multi-multi DX contest station, it simply folded up from overload. In such situations, much older tube receivers costing much less would hear things loud-and-clear that the '500 couldn't tell were there.
All those problems were eventually overcome in newer designs, of course. What's really great is that today we have so many choices.
btw, in this month's QST there's an article about one of the winners of the Homebrew Challenge II. It's a 5-to-50 watt amplifer to boost the output of a QRP rig. The challenge specified 40 meters but the amp can be used on any amateur HF band by changing the output filter. Total cost using all new parts (not including power supply) is $28.36. Typical amateur radio ingenuity in action, of course. With a little scrounging, could probably cut the price in half or more.
73 de Jim, N2EY