What does a vacuum tube look like?

Basically it looks (and is, somewhat) like a stretched out light bulb.

At the front you have the square flatened surface where the picture is displayed, behind it you have a stem, sort of like the stem of a light bulb.

At the end of the stem you have a filament like the one a bulb has and that send electrons towards the front.

Around that glass stem, still at the back, there are some coils which deflect the beam OS electrons to render the picture on the phosphor at the front. Those look like some noodles made of copper wire.