GADGETS
A
gadget is a small tool such as a machine that has a particular function, but
often thought of as a novelty. Gadgets are sometimes reffered to as gizmoz. The
origins of the word “gadget: trace back to 19th century. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, there is
anecdotal evidence for the use of "gadget" as a placeholder name for a technical item whose precise
name one can't remember since the 1850s; with Robert Brown's 1886 book Spunyarn and Spindrift, A sailor
boy’s log of a voyage out and home in a China tea-clipper containing the earliest known usage in
print.[2] The etymology of the word is disputed.
A widely
circulated story holds that the word gadget
was "invented" when Gadget, Gauthier & Cie, the
company behind the construction of the Statue of
Liberty (1886), made a small-scale version of the
monument and named it after their firm; however
this contradicts the evidence that the word was
already used before in nautical circles, and the fact
that it did not become popular, at least in the USA, until after World War I.[2] Other sources cite a
derivation from the Frenchgâchette which has been
applied to various pieces of a firing mechanism, or the French gagée, a small tool or accessory.[2]
was "invented" when Gadget, Gauthier & Cie, the
company behind the construction of the Statue of
Liberty (1886), made a small-scale version of the
monument and named it after their firm; however
this contradicts the evidence that the word was
already used before in nautical circles, and the fact
that it did not become popular, at least in the USA, until after World War I.[2] Other sources cite a
derivation from the Frenchgâchette which has been
applied to various pieces of a firing mechanism, or the French gagée, a small tool or accessory.[2]
The October
1918 issue of Notes and
Queries contains a multi-article entry on the word
"gadget" (12 S. iv. 187). H. Tapley-Soper of
The City Library, Exeter, writes:
Queries contains a multi-article entry on the word
"gadget" (12 S. iv. 187). H. Tapley-Soper of
The City Library, Exeter, writes:
A discussion arose at the Plymouth meeting of the Devonshire Association in 1916 when it was suggested that
this word should be recorded in the list of local verbal provincialisms.
Several members dissented from its inclusion on the ground that it is in common
use throughout the country; and a naval officer who was present said that it
has for years been a popular expression in the service for 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-cycle friends to the collection of
fitments to be seen on motor cycles. 'His handle-bars are smothered in gadgets'
refers to such things as speedometers, mirrors, levers, badges, mascots,
&c., attached to the steering handles. The 'jigger' or short-rest used in
billiards is also often called a 'gadget'; and the name has been applied by
local platelayers to the 'gauge' used to test the accuracy of their work. In
fact, to borrow from present-day Army slang, 'gadget' is applied to 'any old
thing.'[3]
The usage of the term in military parlance extended beyond
the navy. In the book "Above the Battle" by Vivian Drake, published in
1918 by D. Appleton & Co., of New York and London, being the memoirs of a
pilot in the British Royal Flying Corps, there is the following
passage: "Our ennui was occasionally relieved by new gadgets --
"gadget" is the Flying Corps slang for invention! Some gadgets were
good, some comic and some extraordinary."[4]
By the second half of the twentieth century, the term
"gadget" had taken on the connotations of compactness and mobility.
In the 1965 essay "The Great Gizmo" (a term used interchangeably with
"gadget" throughout the essay), the architectural and design critic Reyner Banham defines the item as:
A characteristic class of US products––perhaps the most
characteristic––is a small self-contained unit of high performance in relation
to its size and cost, whose function is to transform some undifferentiated set
of circumstances to a condition nearer human desires. The minimum of skills is
required in its installation and use, and it is independent of any physical or
social infrastructure beyond that by which it may be ordered from catalogue and
delivered to its prospective user. A class of servants to human needs, these
clip-on devices, these portable gadgets, have coloured American thought and
action far more deeply––I suspect––than is commonly understood.[5]
In
the software industry, "Gadget" refers to computer programs that
provide services without needing an independent application to be launched for
each one, but instead run in an environment that manages multiple gadgets.
There are several implementations based on existing software development
techniques, like JavaScript, form input, and various image formats.
the
earliest documented use of the term gadget in
context of software engineering was in 1985 by the
developers of AmigaOS, the system of the Amiga computers). It
denotes what other technological traditions call GUI widget—a
control element in graphical user interface. This naming
convention remains in continuing use (as of 2008) since then.
The
X11[6] windows
system 'Intrinsic'[7] also
defines gadgets and their relationship to widgets (buttons, labels etc.). The
gadget was a windowless widget which was supposed to improve the performance of
the application by reducing the memory load on the X server. A gadget would use
the Window id of its parent widget and had no children of its own.
It
is not known whether other software companies are explicitly drawing on that
inspiration when featuring the word in names of their technologies or simply
referring to the generic meaning. The word widget is older in
this context. In the movie "Back to School"
from 1986 by Alan Metter, there is a scene where an economics professor Dr.
Barbay, wants to start for educational purposes a fictional company that
produces "widgets: It's a fictional product."