From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Gadget
Gadget
This is an article about gadgets. For Wikipedia Gadgets in gadgets’ refers to such things as speedometers,
go to Wikipedia:Gadget. mirrors, levers, badges, mascots, &c., attached to
the steering handles. The ’jigger’ or short-rest used
A gadget is a small[1] technological object such as a device in billiards is also often called a ’gadget’; and the
or an appliance that has a particular function, but is often name has been applied by local platelayers to the
thought of as a novelty. Gadgets are invariably[citation need- ’gauge’ used to test the accuracy of their work. In
ed] considered to be more unusually or cleverly designed
fact, to borrow from present-day Army slang, ’gad-
than normal technological objects at the time of their in- get’ is applied to ’any old thing.’[3]
vention. Gadgets are sometimes also referred to as giz-
mos. The usage of the term in military parlance extended be-
yond the navy. In the book "Above the Battle" by Vivian
History Drake, published in 1918 by D. Appleton & Co., of New
York and London, being the memoirs of a pilot in the Bri-
The origins of the word "gadget" trace back to the 19th tish Royal Flying Corps, there is the following passage:
century. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "Our ennui was occasionally relieved by new gadgets -
there is anecdotal evidence for the use of "gadget" as - "gadget" is the Flying Corps slang for invention! Some
a placeholder name for a technical item whose precise gadgets were good, some comic and some extraordi-
name one can’t remember since the 1850s; with Robert nary."[4]
Brown’s 1886 book Spunyarn and Spindrift, A sailor boy’s log By the second half of the twentieth century, the term
of a voyage out and home in a China tea-clipper containing "gadget" had taken on the connotations of compactness
the earliest known usage in print.[2] The etymology of and mobility. In the 1965 essay "The Great Gizmo" (a
the word is disputed. A widely circulated story holds that term used interchangeably with "gadget" throughout the
the word gadget was "invented" when Gaget, Gauthier essay), the architectural and design critic Reyner Ban-
& Cie, the company behind the repoussé construction of ham defines the item as:
the Statue of Liberty (1886), made a small-scale version
of the monument and named it after their firm; however A characteristic class of US products––perhaps the
this contradicts the evidence that the word was already most characteristic––is a small self-contained unit
used before in nautical circles, and the fact that it did of high performance in relation to its size and cost,
not become popular, at least in the USA, until after World whose function is to transform some undifferenti-
War I.[2] Other sources cite a derivation from the French ated set of circumstances to a condition nearer hu-
gâchette which has been applied to various pieces of a fir- man desires. The minimum of skills is required in
ing mechanism, or the French gagée, a small tool or acces- its installation and use, and it is independent of
sory.[2] any physical or social infrastructure beyond that
The October 1918 issue of Notes and Queries contains by which it may be ordered from catalogue and de-
a multi-article entry on the word "gadget" (12 S. iv. 187). livered to its prospective user. A class of servants to
H. Tapley-Soper of The City Library, Exeter, writes: human needs, these clip-on devices, these portable
gadgets, have coloured American thought and ac-
A discussion arose at the Plymouth meeting of the tion far more deeply––I suspect––than is commonly
Devonshire Association in 1916 when it was sug- understood.[5]
gested that this word should be recorded in the
list of local verbal provincialisms. Several members
dissented from its inclusion on the ground that it Other uses
is in common use throughout the country; and a The first atomic bomb was nicknamed the gadget by the
naval officer who was present said that it has for scientists of the Manhattan Project, tested at the Trinity
years been a popular expression in the service for site.
a tool or implement, the exact name of which is
unknown or has for the moment been forgotten. I
have also frequently heard it applied by motor-cy-
Application gadgets
cle friends to the collection of fitments to be seen In the software industry, "gadget" refers to computer
on motor cycles. ’His handle-bars are smothered programs that provide services without needing an in-
1
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Gadget
dependent application to be launched for each one, but
instead run in an environment that manages multiple
See also
gadgets. There are several implementations based on ex- • Electronics
isting software development techniques, like JavaScript, • Domestic technology
form input, and various image formats. • Multitool
Further information: Google Desktop, Google • Gizmo
Gadgets, Microsoft Gadgets, and Dashboard • Inspector Gadget
software Apple Widgets
The earliest[citation needed] documented use of the term Notes
gadget in context of software engineering was in 1985 [1] gadget - Definition from Dictionary.com
by the developers of AmigaOS, the operating system of [2] ^ Michael Quinion: World Wide Words: Gadget
the Amiga computers (intuition.library and also later (accessed February 6, 2008) Also in: Michael
gadtools.library). It denotes what other technological tra-
gad Quinion: Port Out, Starboard Home: The Fascinating
ditions call GUI widget—a control element in graphical Stories We Tell About the Words We Use. ISBN
user interface. This naming convention remains in con- 978-0141012230
tinuing use (as of 2008) since then. [3] Notes and Queries: 1918 s12-IV: 281-282 (accessed
It is not known whether other software companies June 2, 2010)
are explicitly drawing on that inspiration when featuring [4] Above the Battle, p.191 at Google Book Search
the word in names of their technologies or simply refer- [5] Reyner Banham. "The Great Gizmo." Design by
ring to the generic meaning. The word widget is older in Choice. Ed. Penny Sparke. Rizzoli, 1981. p. 110.
this context.[citation needed] Originally appeared in Industrial Design 12
Further information: Workbench (AmigaOS) (September 1965): 58-59.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gadget&oldid=464560349"
Categories:
• Technology
• Placeholder names
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