As the vacuum tube became a revolution in electronics after 1904 when British engineer John Ambrose Fleming invented it, by 1947 it was used throughout in radio receivers and transmitters everywhere. 1947 then heralded the invention of the first point contact transistor, which was still a somewhat flimsy construction as this image shows.
The next invention came a year later, the junction transistor was invented, but at first production was a hit and miss process, and most functioning transistors went into military applications. Only around 1960 the transistor found its way to consumer electronics.
Eventually, lithographic processes became the way to create transistors in larger numbers onto one substrate, paving the way for integrated circuits.