How was the word transistor formed from the words transfer and resistor?
Negative-channel metal-oxide semiconductors (NMOS) employ a positive secondary voltage to switch a shallow layer of p-type semiconductor material below the gate into n-type. For positive-channel metal-oxide semiconductors (PMOS), all these polarities are reversed. NMOS transistors are more expensive, but faster, than PMOS transistors.
The term transistor was coined in May 1948 by John Robinson Pierce, an electrical engineer at Bell Labs who was also a science-fiction author. The name is a portmanteauāa linguistic blendāderived from the words transfer and resistor.1
This name reflects the device's function as a solid-state component that transfers an input signal across a material with varying resistance to control or amplify electrical current.21