You won't believe your eyes -- here are videos of the Regency plant from 1955, from a documentary about manufacturing in the United States. It was produced by the National Association of Manufacturers, "NAM" (earlier advertisement from Life, Oct. 27, 1947, p.89).

To save the files to your disk, just right-click on the link and select "Save Target As". Then double-click the file on your disk, to play. Here's the complete film episode, heavily compressed as streaming video (there are some compression artifacts, but at least it's only a 2 MB file). The following are not compressed and are slightly better resolution, but are larger files.

3.6 MB -- Hand-placing the transistors on the PC board. Look at the carton of transistors from Texas Instruments.

2.5 MB -- Electrical test bench. Perhaps they were adjusting the IF transformers, etc.

3.8 MB -- Soldering the speaker to the chassis. Note the TR-1 advertisement on the wall, over her shoulder.

4.9 MB -- Soldering the volume control?. Looks like this is the last step before placing the chassis in the plastic case.

3.1 MB -- Applying fingernail polish to the tuning cap screws, and wax to the IF transformers. Note the various colored cases just lying around. She grabs a random one. Also, see the soldering-iron-heated cup holding the wax? It's no wonder the labels always seem to have wax on them -- she puts the back of the case on when the wax is probably still liquid.

1.9 MB -- Radios on a conveyer belt. Is that a pearlescent lavender one there? Just kidding. The colors are just appearing randomly.

Fascinating. It seems both very organized (or at least regimented), and arbitrary or random at the same time. I guess it worked!