Fun fact: Before any commercial production of transistors started, advanced hobbyists and amateur radio operators who saw this groundbreaking device from the news already started experimenting. Making your own point-contact transistor [0] was a classic DIY project in 1949 - you break the glass and extract the silicon from an 1N34 germanium diode, then form the collector and emitter. In recent years, Jeri Ellsworth repeated this experiment with a video tutorial [1].
[0] https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Radio-Craft/1940s/Radi... (see page 38)
[1] https://hackaday.com/2010/11/05/making-point-contact-transis...