transistor (n.)

small electronic device, 1948, from transfer + resistor, so called because it transfers an electrical current across a resistor. Said to have been coined by U.S. electrical engineer John Robinson Pierce (1910-2002) of Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J., where the device was invented in 1947. It took over many functions of the vacuum tube. Transistor radio is first recorded 1958.

updated on February 13, 2014