Gadgets

A gadget is a small specialized mechanical or electronic device, contraption, contrivance, gizmo, appliance, or convenience that does something impressive, useful, or a specialized function.

At the time of their invention gadgets are considered to be more cleverly or unusually designed then the known objects presently in use and are sometimes considered a novelty.

Gadgets and gizmos have a certain distinction between them in some circles where a gadget is considered to have less moving parts and may not need them at all as compared to the gizmo.

An example is given where an analog watch was considered a gizmo and the digital watch was known as a gadget.

The earliest known usage of the word gadget in print was from the book Spunyam and Spindrift in 1886 by Robert Brown with the character referring to a technical item whose name he could not remember since the 1850's, in which the content was from; A sailor boys log of a voyage out and home in a China tea-clipper.

A history story has it that Gadget, Gauther & Cie, the company that was behind the 1886 construction of the Statue of Liberty invented the word gadget by producing a small scale version of the statue and named it after their company.

Although the evidence that the word was being used before this in nautical circles would contradict this and the fact it did not become popular until after World War I in the U.S.A.

Scientists of the Manhattan Project nicknamed the first atomic bomb that was tested at the Trinity Site, the gadget.

Electronic gadgets are unlike mechanical gadgets in that they need electricity to power them to be useful.

The television, transistor radio, quartz watch, and cell phone are the most commonly used electronic gadgets today.

Programmable gadgets are the category in which most of the modern gadgets that we use today are placed.

Application gadgets are computer programs and they run in an environment that manages several or multiple gadgets rather than launching an independent application for each one.