Alternative name for Transistor

Way back 1948 came a semiconductor device that revolutionized the Electronics world
Bell Telephone Laboratories needed a generic name for the new device
John R. Pierce, coined name "Transistor" for the device

A combination of the words "transfer" and "resistor" with the suffix "-istor" used by Bell engineers.

But what if Germans or Dutch had invented this semiconductor device in 1935 by Oskar Heil.
How would they called it ?
 
But what if Germans or Dutch had invented this semiconductor device in 1935 by Oskar Heil.
How would they called it ?

Stromregler, for current regulator, or Stromverstaerker or Durchflussverstaerker, that's Current or Flow Amplifier.

The last one probably, or since its German, something longer and more descriptive that would get shortened down, like say

KuenstlicheEinschraenkungDurchflussVerstaerker, or KEDV
 
So a 'staerker', maybe?

nope, german language is to complex and to precise for that work
"Verstärker" is in english "amplifier"
"stärker" is "stronger"

The last one probably, or since its German, something longer and more descriptive that would get shortened down, like say
Oh yes, We germans LOVE acronym of long worlds

Feldeffecktschaltkreis = FEFS
Metall oxid Halbleiter Feldeffeckt Schaltreis = MohfeS

but that is for professional use and for manual
i guess the german or Dutch company would go for brand name
 
There where a number of competing names at the time- unfortunately none i remember at the moment. I am a member of an email list of old radio collectors. I'll go there and ask if anyone remembers any alternative transistor names.

If you excuse the lecture, the amplification factor of a vacuum tube is measured in terms of transconductance. Conductance is defied as the inverse of resistance and has units current in Amperes ( in practice often milliamps) divided by voltage in volts. In general the grid electrode is the input in vacuum tube amplifier and the plate electrode is the output. Transconductance is the ratio of output ( plate electrode current in milliamps) divided by the input voltage applied to the grid electrode.

So trans conductance is the amplification of a vacuum tube expressed as a conductance ratio. The Trans part come because unlike ordinary conductance measurements the voltage and the current are measured across two terminal sets, not one. Think transfer conductance with the input voltage parameters "transferred" across the vacuum tube electrodes.

I transistor has the input and output parameters reversed with respect to a vacuum tube. The input is a current and the output parameter is a voltage. The amplification ratio is then Voltage/current and voltage divided by current is a resistance. Because the voltage is measured at the input and the current is measured at the output, this is not an ordinary resistance but instead is a Trans-resistance.

It is not much of a leap to refer to a trans-resistance device as a transistor.
I agree that this means a vacuum tube should be a transconductor but transconductor is no improvement over tube ( or valve for our English members) so it is not a surprise that usage never caught on.

If you are an engineer accustomed to thinking of amplification in terms of transconductance or transresistance the name transistor is very adapt and hard to improve upon.
 
"Übetragungswiederstandsschalter basierend auf Halbleitertechnologie" or something like that. Honestly since the original name comes from Latin that is good enough for most languages, but if you need a really German sounding you can 'Germanize' the basic idea by turning it into Übetragungswiederstandsschalter (transfer resistance switch) which would probably be shortened to Ü-Schalter or ÜW-Schalter or just Überschalter.

In fact Überschalter is such a German word that it would fit perefectly. In Dutch it might work out to be something like a overdrachtsschakelaar or overschakelaar.
 
Roughly the same time as the Transistor was invented a famous Science Fiction device called an Interocitor was also invented by Raymond F Jones in his novel This Island Earth. The Interociter was a multifunctional device that could be many things a communicator, a weapon or auto-pilot. How about Interocitator and Transister become interchangeable.
 
Codae:
I had no idea where iota came from when I read your question. I googled it and got the standard meaning as a "small insignificant amount" I am not giving you one iota more.

The prefix "tron" was already in use by 1948 as in magnetron Klystron etc.

So I suppose iotatron was mean to invoke the image of a really really small electronic device.

I wonder if these Bell Laboratory engineers had understood that eventually people where going to put 128 billion of these devices on a silicon die smaller than a thumbtack head if they would have stuck to their guns and insisted upon "iotatron"?
 

Archibald

Banned
most options suggested here sounds pretty bad, the popular masses wouldn't like it. Further complication of course is transistor > portable radio (it also happened in French)

iotatron just sounds ridiculous.

'staerker' sounds like someone with a bad cold trying to clear his throat (staaaaeeeeerkeeer, cough)

"Übetragungswiederstandsschalter basierend auf Halbleitertechnologie"

God bless you !

as for -TRON, in French an etron is the polite word for a piece of shit.
 
Top