Bell Labs engineers had become fond of the suffix “-istor”: Small devices known as varistors and thermistors had already become essential components in the phone system’s circuitry. “Transistor,” the memo noted, was “an abbreviated combination of the words ‘transconductance’ or ‘transfer,’ and ‘varistor.’”8 To the company brass, the other names had some winning aspects, too. Iotatron, for instance, “satisfactorily conveys the sense of a minute element.” Semiconductor triode, the memo noted, was a “fairly good name,” if a bit unwieldy. But when the ballot results came in, transistor was the
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