Today in 1950, Walter H. Brattain and John Bardeen were granted a patent for a three-electrode circuit element utilizing semiconductive materials, otherwise known as the transistor.
The 1956 Noble Prize in Physics (awarded to William Shockley, Brattain and Bardeen) explained the name transistor as a combination of the words transfer and resistor "because it is a resistor or semiconductor device which can amplify electrical signals as they are transferred through it from input to output terminals."