I've restored radios from the early 1930's. They all had full wave rectification using dual plate tubes (type 80) and centre tapped transformer secondaries. I recommended a bridge rectifier in this case to avoid the need for a centre tap. You are correct that the the power supply filters typically used a smoothing choke. In radios, it was the field coil for the speaker. So it served dual duty. Electrolytics came out in the early 1930's, and values up to at least 30μF were available. Almost no tube based consumer electronics used a regulated supply. Certain sections of tube colour TV's used voltage regulators, but that was the exception. High end lab equipment (eg., Hewlett Packard, Tektronix) were about the only things that used regulated supplies.