Firetron

The cultural capital of physics and radio engineering spread rapidly after 1945 evinced by the diffusion of the suffix –tron across the Cold War world. For the next half-century, the desire to appropriate the standards, ideals, and image of the cyclotron and the magnetron has led the suffix –tron to turn up in many diverse places. Almost innumerable devices for the flowering computer industry carried the suffix tron, like the DC Flux Parametric, or the current measuring Wedgetron.[1] 

Plenty of technological gadgets large and small seemingly chose names that resonated with the values of the new atomic age, especially the desire to control and monitor nature. In 1954, for example, the Electronic Corporation of America released their patented Fireeye flame safeguard unit complete with its “firetron cell,” a semiconductor who resistance changed with the received level of infrared radiation.[2]

[1] Kia Fock Lee and Eiichi Goto, DC Flux Parametron: A New Approach to Joseph Junction Logic (World Scientific, 1986); “TR 62-49: Wedgetron - A Cryogenic, Analog, Current Measuring Device, 1962,” Box 7, folder 33. Burroughs Corporation Records. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota Libraries.

[2] http://www.fireye.com/Documents/C30.pdf accessed December 1, 2016.