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{{Short description|Small mechanical device}}
{{hatnote group|{{other uses}}{{for|Wikipedia Gadgets|Wikipedia:Gadget|selfref=true}}}}
[[File:Cordless electric razor (5506706668).jpg|thumb|In a 1965 essay, [[Reyner Banham]] describes the cordless [[electric shaver|electric razor]] as an example of "a gizmo, a gadget, a gimmick".<ref name="banham"/>]]

A '''gadget''' is a [[machine|mechanical device]] or any ingenious article.<ref>{{cite Dictionary.com|gadget}}</ref> Gadgets are sometimes referred to as ''[[wikt:gizmo|gizmos]]''.

==History==
The etymology of the word is disputed. The word first appears as reference to an 18th-century tool in [[Glass production|glassmaking]] that was developed as a spring [[Glassblowing|pontil]].<ref name="hadjamach">Charles R. Hadjamach: ''British Glass, 1800–1914''. London. 1991. p. 35 {{ISBN|9781851491414}}</ref> As stated in the glass dictionary published by the Corning Museum of Glass, a gadget is a "metal rod with a spring clip that grips the foot of a vessel and so avoids the use of a pontil". Gadgets were first used in the late 18th century.<ref name="Corning Museum of Glass">[[Corning Museum of Glass]]: ''[https://www.cmog.org/glass-dictionary/gadget Glass Dictionary: Gadget] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220126130845/https://www.cmog.org/glass-dictionary/gadget |date=2022-01-26 }}'' (accessed November 4, 2018)</ref> 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.<ref name="quinion">[[Michael Quinion]]: ''[https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-gad1.htm World Wide Words: Gadget] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220331135307/http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-gad1.htm |date=2022-03-31 }}'' (accessed February 6, 2008) Also in<!--according to https://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-01-30-n75.html-->: Michael Quinion: ''Port Out, Starboard Home: The Fascinating Stories We Tell About the Words We Use''. {{ISBN|978-0-14-101223-0}}</ref>

A widely circulated story holds that the word gadget was "invented" when Gaget, Gauthier & Cie, the company behind the [[Repoussé and chasing|repoussé]] 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 US, until after World War I.<ref name="quinion" /> Other sources cite a derivation from the French ''gâchette'' which has been applied to various pieces of a firing mechanism, or the French ''gagée'', a small tool or accessory.<ref name="quinion" />

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:

<blockquote>
A discussion arose at the Plymouth meeting of [[Devonshire Association|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.'<ref name="notes_and_queries">''[[Notes and Queries]]'': [https://web.archive.org/web/20060603230232/https://nq.oxfordjournals.org/content/vols12-IV/issue85/index.dtl 1918 s12-IV: 281–282] (accessed June 2, 2010)</ref>
</blockquote>

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."<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=0n7GCX1NUUIC&q=gadget&pg=PA126 ''Above the Battle'', p.191] at Google Book Search</ref>

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:

<blockquote>
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.<ref name="banham">[[Reyner Banham]]. "The Great Gizmo." ''Design by Choice.'' Ed. Penny Sparke. Rizzoli, 1981. p. 110. Originally appeared in ''Industrial Design'' 12 (September 1965): 58-59.</ref>
</blockquote>

==Other uses==

The first [[Nuclear weapon|atomic bomb]] was nicknamed ''[[Trinity (nuclear test)|the gadget]]'' by the Scientists of the [[Manhattan Project]], tested at the Trinity site.

==Application gadgets==

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. Proprietary formats include [[Google Desktop]], [[Google Gadgets]], [[Microsoft Gadgets]], [[Workbench (AmigaOS)|the AmigaOS Workbench]] and [[dashboard software Apple Widgets]].

The earliest{{Citation needed|date=May 2008}} documented use of the term ''gadget'' in context of [[software engineering]] was in 1985 by the developers of [[AmigaOS]], the [[operating system]] of the [[Amiga]] computers (''[[Intuition (Amiga)|intuition.library]]'' and also later ''gadtools.library''). 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<ref>[[X Window System protocols and architecture]]</ref> windows system 'Intrinsics'<ref>[[X Toolkit Intrinsics]]</ref> 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."

==See also==
{{Wiktionary}}
* [[Domestic technology]]
* [[Electronics]]
* [[List of gadget magazines]]
* [[Gizmo (disambiguation)]]
* [[Gadget Flow]]
* ''[[Inspector Gadget]]''
* [[Merchandising]]
* [[Multi-tool]]
* [[Widget (economics)|Widget]]

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

[[Category:Tools]]
[[Category:Placeholder names]]
[[Category:Software by type]]