The story
Registered trademark of the National Electrostatics Corporation (and later the Pelletron Corporation), from pellet + -tron, for the pellets in the charging chain.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
pelletron
Today it means: A type of electrostatic particle accelerator that builds a charge of high voltage using a charging chain of short conductive tubes called pellets connected by links made of insulating material, as opposed to using a belt or rectifier stack. Full definition →