Lee’s reasoning focuses on the most prominent active electronic device: the transistor. It has an output that can be switched by a current or voltage input. In other words, a transistor is a way of switching current on and off.
But there is no comparable device to switch a voltage. He sets out to describe such a device.
Transistors take an input signal and transfer it to the current output, rather like a variable resistor. Hence the name—a combination of “transfer” and “resistor.” By contrast, the device he imagines would transfer an input signal into a voltage output, like a variable capacitor. So Lee calls it a trancitor.
He goes on to suggest how it might be used. One obvious application is to pair a trancitor and a transistor to create circuits that are far simpler and more energy efficient than existing designs. For example, Lee shows how it would be possible to create a simple voltage amplifier using a single trancitor and a single transistor. By contrast, a conventional version of this circuit requires four transistors.
