Why are transistors called "Q"?

[Tony Duell]

> After French took over the RCA, they started putting weird location 
> marks:  It goes like this:  LL005 for fly, TL00x for transistor in 
> horizontal, TV00x for video transistor amps.   So on.  Totally 

That second character 'L' might well stand for 'line' which is the 
conventioal name for the hoprizontal deflection system over here. We talk 
abvout the 'line output trnasistor' where you'd say 'HOT'.

Were the transistors in the vertical stages called 'TF00x'? 'F' being 
'frame' or 'field' depending on how old you are.

-tony