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A gadget is a small technological object (such as a device or an appliance) that has a particular
function, but is often thought of as a novelty. Gadgets are invariably considered to be more unusually
or cleverly designed than normal technological objects at the time of their invention. Gadgets are
sometimes also referred to as gizmos.


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The origins of the word "gadget" trace back to the 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. The etymology of the word is disputed. A widely
circulated story holds that the word gadget was "invented" when Gaget, Gauthier & Cie, the company
behind the repose 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. 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.

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:

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, 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.

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, 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."

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 ReinerBonham 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]

Today, the term has gained widespread currency in a variety of industries and activities. It can refer to
tools and toys as diverse as "smartphones", GPS navigation devices, key finders, USB toys, and radio
controlled cars.

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The first atomic bomb was nicknamed the gadget by the scientists of the Manhattan Project, tested at
the Trinity site.


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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.

Further information: Google Desktop, Google Gadgets, Microsoft Gadgets, and Dashboard software
Apple Widgets

The earliest 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 library and also
later gadtools library). It denotes what other technological traditions call GUI widget²a control
element in graphical user interface. This naming convention remains in continuing use (as of 2008)
since then.

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

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Microsoft Gadgets are lightweight single-purpose applications, or software widgets, that can sit on
a Microsoft Windows user's computer desktop, or are hosted on a web page. According to Microsoft, it
will be possible for the different types of gadgets to run on different environments without
modification, but this is currently not the case.

In the context of software engineering, the term gadget was first employed by the developers
of AmigaOS, the operating system of the Amiga computers in 1985.As of 2008, this naming
convention is sometimes used as a synonym for widget²a control element in a graphical user
interface.
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 thegeneric meaning. The
word widget is older in this context.

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c  - Run on a web site, such as Bing.com or Spaces.

c - Run on the desktop or be docked onto, run on the Windows Sidebar.

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c  - Run on auxiliary external displays, such as on the outside of a laptop or even on
an LCD panel in a keyboard, and potentially mobile phones and other devices.

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Web gadgets run on Web sites such as Live.com and Windows Live Spaces

Live.com lets users add RSS feeds in order to view news at a glance. Building off Microsoft's start.com
experimental page, Live.com can be customized with Web Gadgets, mini-applications that can serve
almost any purpose (e.g. mail readers, weather reports, slide shows, search, games, etc.). Some gadgets
integrate with other Windows Live services, including Mail, Search, and Favorites.

Users can create multiple site tabs and customize each with different feeds, gadgets, layouts, and color
schemes.

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Desktop gadgets are desktop widgets; small specialized applications that are generally designed to do
simple tasks, such as clocks, calendars, RSS notifiers or search tools. They can also be used to control
external applications such as Windows Media Center.

A panel, or sidebar, is found on either the right side (default) or the left side of the Windows desktop in
the Windows Vista operating system. Gadgets can be placed on this sidebar, and they are automatically
aligned on it. Gadgets can also be placed elsewhere on the screen, which generally causes them to
expand and display more information. In Windows 7, the sidebar is removed, although gadgets can
somewhat similarly be aligned on any side of the screen. Gadgets are toggled between the two sizes via
a button in Windows 7.
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Windows SideShow is a new technology that lets Windows Vista drive auxiliary, small displays of
various form-factors where ready-access to bite-size bits of information could be represented. These
include displays embedded on the outside of a laptop lid or on a detachable device, enabling access to
information and media even when the main system is in a standby mode. Data can also be displayed on
cell phones and other network-connected devices via Bluetooth and other connectivity options.

The display can be updated with a number of different kinds of information, such as contacts, maps,
calendar, and email. This can then be consulted while the mobile PC is otherwise powered down. Since
the underlying platform is so power-efficient, it can run for hundreds of hours without draining a
notebook battery, while still providing always-on access to data and multimedia content.

Sideshow is coupled to the Windows Vista Sidebar capability ± that is, Sidebar Gadgets are easily
ported to be compatible with Sideshow secondary display applications. However, hardware and silicon
providers can also provide native capabilities to allow for richer multimedia applications such as text,
image, audio and video decode / playback. For example, a notebook with an in-lid display could be
used as an mp3 player while powered down, with the notebook battery providing hundreds of hours of
playback time because of the low power footprint that the Sideshow platform maintains.

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Dashboard is an application for Apple's Mac OS X operating systems, used for hosting mini-
applications known as widgets. First introduced in Tiger, it is a semi-transparent layer that is invisible
to the user unless activated by clicking its icon in the Dock. Alternatively, the user can invoke
Dashboard by moving the cursor into a preassigned hot corner, by pressing a hot key, or mouse button,
any of which can be set to the user's preference.


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When Dashboard is activated, the user's desktop is dimmed and widgets appear in the foreground. Like
application windows, they can be moved around, rearranged, deleted, and recreated (so that more than
one of the same Widget is open at the same time, possibly with different settings). New widgets can be
opened, via an icon bar on the bottom of the layer, by dragging a widget icon out into the layer. After
loading, the widget is ready for use.

Dashboard widgets are created using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style
Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript. Because the same languages are used for creating websites, many
web developers can already build them. Widgets themselves are, at the core, simply HTML files that
are displayed within the Dashboard layer; they use the WebKit application framework that is also used
in Apple's Safari web browser, meaning even users running earlier versions of Mac OS X ² where
Dashboard is unavailable ² can build them.

When a Dashboard widget is built, it usually consists of six files:

The widget's HTML file, which is the actual file that will be displayed in the Dashboard layer

The widget's CSS file, which is used for styling the widget (but is called on from the HTML file)
The widget's JavaScript file, although it may be implemented directly within the HTML file if the
developer desires

The widget's Property List (called ³Info.plist´), which is what Dashboard uses to load the widget¶s
properties (i.e.: name, version, HTML file, etc.)

The background image of the widget, in PNG format

The icon that is displayed in the menu bar

Once all of these files are in the root of a directory, it is given a name and the extension ".wdgt", and
then it can be opened up in Dashboard as a widget. More complex widgets may also include
a Cocoa widget plugin (for platform-specific functionality), one or more JavaScript files (for text
scrolling, preferences, etc.) or multiple images (for personalized select menus or buttons).

Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard" includes an application called Dashcode, which is a more user-friendly
way of creating widgets. Another new feature of Mac OS X Leopard is called "Web Clips" which lets
users easily create widgets from parts of a webpage. During the WWDC 2007 keynote, Steve Jobs
made widgets out of the following: the featured news headlines on Yahoo.com, the top ten most
searched terms on Google, the Photo of the Day on National Geographic, the Dilbert comic strip, and
the box office information from Rotten Tomatoes. The user can also customize the border to further
personalize the widgets.