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gadget json test
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gadget_test.json
[
{
"year": 2009,
"decade": 2000,
"primary": "app",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Widgets and gadgets (the terms are basically interchangeable) are small programs that you can add to your computer desktop, if you are running a newer version of Windows or Mac OS, or to a personalized Web portal such as iGoogle or Netvibes. These handy little applications can remind you about appointments, tell you the time or let you check your e-mail. They can also feed you the latest news headlines -- the perfect way for you to stay in the loop.",
"author": "",
"title": "Always in the Loop: Get SPIEGEL ONLINE's Widgets and Gadgets for Netvibes and iGoogle.",
"source": " http://www.spiegel.de/international/always-in-the-loop-get-spiegel-online-s-widgets-and-gadgets-for-netvibes-and-igoogle-a-642318.html ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1888,
"decade": 1880,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "british",
"quote": "So we gaily essayed the passage, which Jim accomplished safely; but just as the Skipper was stepping off his bridge on to the bank the treacherous bark gave way (this is the worst danger in walking on fallen trees), and with a mighty splash he and his rifle went into the deepest hole in the creek. He thought it best to get out at once, but too late to save his watch, which he opened, and found that the escapement had floated round to the back of the mainspring and jammed the gadget that the chunkerblock would not work. But we were equal to the emergency, and in two minutes had frizzled all the water out of the works by unscrewing the large lens of the binocular and using it as a burning glass. It had a wonderful effect, and with a little coaxing the watch began to go; then we hung it on a tree with the mechanism still exposed to the rays of the sun, and went on our way rejoicing.",
"author": "Lees, J.A. and Clutterbuck, W.J.",
"title": "B.C. 1887: A Ramble in British Columbia",
"source": "London: Longmans, Green and Co. 87",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1900,
"decade": 1900,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "british",
"quote": "If your engine has a linking in gadget on the I.P. valve gear, it would be well to link it in a little, giving the I.P. a shorter cut off, and an increase of power in the I.P. cylinder would result and the H.P. would be decreased a corresponding amount, and the respective powers would even up to about 88 I.H.P. each.",
"author": "",
"title": "Queries and Answers",
"source": "Marine Engineering, vol. 5? July, 1900. p. 316",
"notes": "Queries and Answers section. on a question about improving engine pistons.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1918,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "british",
"quote": "It [the bell punch] will clip tickets only having the proper thickness of paper. As it clips it registers the number of the operations and rings a bell. The clippings fall into a receptacle in the punch so that their numbers and their various colors can be audited with the waybill. The punch cannot be opened, for it is sealed with a paper gadget that has to be broken to open the receptacle.",
"author": "",
"title": "Zone Fare Collection As Seen by a British Tramway Manager",
"source": "Electric Railway Journal. v52n26. December 28, 1918. p. 1138",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1918,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "nautical",
"quote": "If the conning tower is the brain of the ship, the engine-room is its heart. When Jellicoe was speeding up to join Beatty and Evan-Thomas his whole fleet maintained a speed in excess of the trial speeds of some older vessels. Think what skilful [sic] devotion this simple fact reveals, what minute attention day in day out for months and years, so that in the hour of need no mechanical gadget may fail of its duty. And as with Jellicoe's Fleet so all through the war. Whenever the engine-rooms have been tested up to breaking strain they have always, always, stood up to the test. I think less of the splendid work done by destroyer flotillas, by combatant officers and men in th ebig ships, by all those who have manned and directed within the light cruisers. Their work was done within sight; that of the engine-rooms was hidden.",
"author": "Copplestone, Bennet",
"title": "The Silent Watchers: England's Navy During the Great War: What it is and What We Owe to It",
"source": "New York: E.P. Dutton & Company. 1918. p. 319",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1918,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "nautical",
"quote": "He was an engineer, in fact, -- a man who knew every nut, bolt, and gadget of his submarine, and he had a mind infinitely fertile as a resource.",
"author": "Paine, Ralph Delahaye",
"title": "The Fighting Fleets: Five Months of Active Service with the American Destroyers and their Allies in the War Zone",
"source": "Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1918",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1919,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "natural",
"quote": "As an addition to a set of mathematical instruments the gadget shown in Fig. 2 forms a useful adjunct. The pin Z is arranged to fit into leg of the compass such that the center point of the compass and points X and Y all lie in the same straight line.",
"author": "Lind, Wallace L. ",
"title": "Professional Notes: Navigation and Radio",
"source": " United States Naval Institute Proceedings. v45n9. September, 1919",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1919,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "The distortion of the 'field section' or 'field sheet' due to changes of humidity and temperature, has been a thorn in the side of the topographer for many years, neither does there appear to be any means of eliminating it as long as the field sheet is of paper, or Bristol board, mounted upon a wooden board. […] Indeed the feeling of many topographers is averse to the introduction of anything in the nature of a 'gadget.' In those countries where most of our plant table work is done breakdowns may be fatal. Experiment has proved, however, that a simple but ingenious arrangement can be fitted to the existing pattern of legs which provides a slow motion, thrown in or out of action by a cam, and detachable at will. It was tried in 1914 and unanimously approved of.",
"author": "Winterbotham, H. St. J. L.",
"title": "Plane Tables and Field Sheets",
"source": "Engineering and Contracting. vol. 64, issue 4. December 31, 1919",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1919,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "nautical",
"quote": "To-day, when she was wanted worst, the dory was perversely more out of kilter than usual and lay sprawled on the mid-deck, opposite the engine-room hatch, with Kennedy inside and tinkering inquisitively, unscrewing nuts, looking at carburetors, examining spark plugs, and testing aim-pump valves or any other gadget that might possibly have been the seat of such cantankerous misbehavior.",
"author": "Macfarlane, Peter Clark",
"title": "The Exploits of Bilge and Ma",
"source": "Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. 1919",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1921,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "nautical",
"quote": "You see, it was standin' against one bulkhead--against a wall, I mean, about--about amidships I should say of the room. It was as big as me; a big, black, shiny safe, and there was a keyhole in the door covered by a little nickel gadget about as big as--as a dollar.",
"author": "Levison, Eric",
"title": "Ashes of Evidence",
"source": "Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company. 1921. p. 329",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1922,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The multiplied troubles of the radio operator on board ship, and persistent complaints to the superintendent, have hurried the development of the break-key. The name was a misfit for early devices with their multitude of levers, wires and contacts. The delicacy of the equipment was responsible for periodic instruction from the company engineers not to tamper with the outfit. / The 'gadget,' as it was disrespectfully called, sputtered and flashed at the contacts, and the noises circulating in the telephones further tried the patience of the operator. Messages were received with uncertainty and traffic was frequently congested.",
"author": "Winters, S.R.",
"title": "An Ingenious 'Break-In Key': A New Time-Saving Device That Enables the Operator at the Transmitting Station To Listen-In on the Receiving Station While He is Carrying on Communication.",
"source": "Popular Radio. September, 1922. v2n1",
"notes": "for messages transmitted and received aboard sea-going vessels",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1926,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "Trucks Make Their Own Fuel. The accompanying photographs, showing a method of generating fuel gas for motor vehicles from charcoal, which has been rather extensively tried out in France, illustrates, to our mind, a tendency which has been apparent in Europe since the World War--a tendency to attempt to accomplish by complicated methods what is already being accomplished through simple means. […] The apparatus consists of a generating chamber having a grate, firebox and boiler for producing the necessary steam for making the gas. It appears to be an amazing complication of internal 'gadgets.' The gas must be scrubbed, filtered to remove particles of charcoal, and further purified in a centrifugal purifier. There are a number of other details which it seems unnecessary to mention here.",
"author": "Ingalls, Albert G.",
"title": "The Scientific American Digest",
"source": "Scientific American 134, (January 1926) p. 42-46",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1927,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "All I've got to do,' he would explain, 'is to figure out a way to shift this 'dooflapper.' When I get this 'dooflapper' so it will topple this little lever and let it drop this gadget into this groove here, this wheel will turn over and release this other lever, and I'll be all right. Then this other cog will flop up and catch this other gadget, and I'll have perpetual motion, you bet!'",
"author": "",
"title": "The Rotarian: A Magazine of Service",
"source": "Rotary International. September 1927",
"notes": "gadget names an individual part of a mechanism, a cog, etc.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1929,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "You know, of course, that the weak radio impulse that reaches your set by way of the antenna is amplified or strengthened many times before it is converted into the electrical equivalent of sound that you can hear. This strengthening of the radio signal is accomplished by passing it through several circuits, each of which consists, essentially, of a vacuum tube, a coil of wire, and a queer-looking metal gadget with two sets of metal fins, called a condenser. You have noticed how some of these fins slide in between others without actually coming into contact, when you turn the knob that tunes the stations. Moving these fins, or condenser plates, governs the tuning of the individual stage of amplification. The same result could be obtained by changing the number of turns in the coil of wire, but it is mechanically more convenient to do the tuning by moving the condenser plates.",
"author": "",
"title": "Why Two Sets May Look Alike, But Behave Differently",
"source": "Popular Science, Feb 1929, p. 64",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1929,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "But let's just forget about ignition switches and other fancy business and see what we actually do with the six-volt battery current. This little square thing I'm drawing now is supposed to be the spark coil, and this funny gadget right next to it is the contact breaker or timer. One terminal of the battery is wired to the frame of the car and there's a wire from the other pole of the battery to the spark coil. Then there's a wire from the spark coil to the insulated, stationary contact point in the timer.",
"author": "",
"title": "How the Ignition System Works",
"source": "Popular Science, March 1929. p. 89",
"notes": "In typical dialogue, frame story style, explaining how the mechanism works through the mechanism of story",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1930,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "nautical",
"quote": "The Old Man was at dinner. When about to work on a plate of salad, he jabbed his fork against something that clinked. He growled and fished out a brass disk about the size of an English shilling. He slammed the thing on the tablecloth and stare at it until his eyeballs almost popped out. Then he roared: 'Boy! Boy!' Cato came on the lope from the pantry. 'What,' demanded the Admiral, 'is this gadget?' Cato lenas over and spells out the words on the tag carefully. He's a Filipino, just getting educated. 'Hum,' he finally said. 'Look lak a dog-license, yessa!",
"author": "MacDowell, Syl",
"title": "The Admiral's Gun Swab",
"source": "Boy's Life, June 1930. p. 30.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1940,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The \"Stuka's\" deflector fork is the bomb rack gadget which lowers the 1100- or 550-pound bomb so that it will clear the arc of the propeller blades when released. The bomb is carried snuggled up against the center section of the wing to diminish air resistance. When the pilot makes ready to dive, the rack is extended.",
"author": "Peck, James L.H.",
"title": "Helldivers: Describing the Technique of Dive-Bombing, Conceived for United States Naval Use",
"source": "Scientific American 163, (October 1940). p. 186-188",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1941,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Neat little gadget for mounting a diagonal in a Newtonian reflector is shown in Figure 5, which is self­ explanatory (\"Hua-i neng ta ch'ien yen,\" or, picture's meaning can ex­ press a thousand words, in case your Chinese has become rusty). Developed by Max Burgdorf, Natchitoches, Louisiana, and made by Lorane Brit­tain and Sherwood Burgdorf, it takes the place of the more customary spider support for diagonals and would cause a less complicated diffraction pattern than the latter.",
"author": "Ingalls, Albert G.",
"title": "Telescoptics",
"source": " Scientific American 164, (May 1941). p. 316-319",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1948,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "",
"author": "Bachman, Charles Herbert",
"title": " Controls and Gadgets",
"source": "Techniques in Experimental Electronics. J. Wiley. 1948. 252pp. Chapter 7",
"notes": "FIND THIS. Firestone recap http://bit.ly/b1H2pc",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1957,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "If the sound presented was the \"wrong\" one, she was supposed to remain in this position. If it was the right one, she was to knock on the lid of a switch box in front of her cage with her trunk: this caused an electrical gadget to bring a food reward within reach of her trunk. The experimenter sat behind a screen watching the animal by means of a mirror system.",
"author": "Rensch, B.",
"title": "The Intelligence of Elephants",
"source": "Scientific American 196, (February 1957). p. 44-49",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1973,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Beale engines perform in any orientation-vertical, horizontal, inclined or upside down. They are amazingly simple in construction and do not depend on springs, valves or any kind of mechanical gadget.",
"author": "Walker, Graham",
"title": "The Stirling Engine",
"source": "Scientific American 229, (August 1973). p. 80-87",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1974,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "cog",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "First I thought I was going to be sick, and then I thought I was going to die. Then I thought I was sick and dead both. Along the side of big roads you sometimes find a billboardpainted on something like a Venetian blind so that when the slats are tilted one way, there is one picture, and then, when by some inner gadgetry the slats are tilted the other way, there gradually appears another picture, and that is how it happened there in Brownie's kitchen. First I was looking at one thing, then I was looking at another.",
"author": "Buechner, Frederick",
"title": "Love Feast",
"source": "Love Feast. Scribner, 1974. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1960,
"decade": 1960,
"primary": "cog;instrument",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Some months ago I added a gadget to the tunnel which considerably broadens its utility as a scientific tool. This consists simply of an electric door bell (with the gong removed) and a chamber with a diaphragm inserted in the smoke circuit just ahead of the 'rake.' When properly adjusted, the door-bell-and-diaphragm assembly acts as a chopper to send the smoke out into the tunnel in small puffs or pulses instead of in a continuous stream",
"author": "Strong, C.L.",
"title": "The Amateur Scientist",
"source": "Scientific American 203, (November 1960). p. 202-212 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1919,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "cog;placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "n order to make possible the translation of this specimen of 'Flyese,' our British contemporary, Flying, has published the following list of aeronautic slang phrases, with which some of our airmen are no doubt familiar. … Gadget -- Accessory, fitting, anything difficult to remember or define. Super-gadget -- The latest thing in fittings. ",
"author": "Edwards, R. Stanley",
"title": "Aeronitis",
"source": "Aerial Age Weekly. July 21, 1919",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1929,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "cog;placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "It must be wonderful,' babbled Gladys, ' to be a big, business man and sell people things.' 'It is,' agreed Saleratus. 'Only I'm not.' 'Oh, yes, you are,' Gladys rattled on. 'You sell people heaps and heaps of things, whether they want them or not.' 'I do?' asked Saleratus. 'Yes, you do. You see I know all about you. I've been just crazy to meet you, and I was thrilled when Jessica told me you were coming to-night.' 'You were,' said Saleratus. 'I certainly was. I wish you'd try to sell me something.' 'Hey,' muttered Saleratus. 'Yes, I do. Won't you sell me something?' 'I'll sell you a gag,' Saleratus rejoined, as the car hit a particularly wicked bump in the road down which they were flying. 'A what?' asked Gladys, righting herself. 'A gadget,' said Saleratus. 'What's that?' 'A do funny you put on a machine.' 'Why would I want a gadget?' 'You wouldn't,' said Saleratus. 'Then why try to sell me one,' said Gladys. 'I won't,' replied Saleratus. 'Don't you just love nature?' asked Gladys.",
"author": "Livermore, George G.",
"title": "Carry On!",
"source": "Boys' Life, August 1929",
"notes": "a salesman flirting with a young woman on a car ride",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1909,
"decade": 1900,
"primary": "cog;propername",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The erector arm was attached to the tunnel segments by a gadget (Fig. 15).",
"author": "Japp, Henry",
"title": "The New York Tunnel Extension of the Pennsylvania Railroad: Contractors' Plant for East River Tunnels",
"source": "Proceedings of the American Society of Civil Engineers. vol. 35, no. 9. (November 1909)",
"notes": " looks like a huge lifting mechanism to install tunnel segments, and the \"gadget\" is the piece that attaches the \"erector\" to the segments",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1910,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "cog;propername",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "In order to unite these plates by close-fitting joints, the contact surfaces were machined. At the centre of an ordinary segment a hole was tapped to receive a 1.25 inch pipe. This was the grout hole. […] The lug which, with the Hudson Companies, formed an integral part of the ordinary segment, was here omitted. A gadget was employed instead, in connection with a corresponding pair of bolt holes near the centre. The device furnished a means by which the mechanical erector controlled the plate. However, a great deal of placing was done by hand, in spite of the fact that all pieces except the key weighed a ton each.",
"author": "Springer, J.F.",
"title": "The River Tunnels at New York",
"source": "Cassier's Magazine: An Engineering Monthly. vol. 37 no. 5. March, 1910.",
"notes": "On the newly completed East River Tunnels, connecting to Penn Station",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1910,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "cog;propername",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "No lug was cast on the segments for attachment to the erector, but in its place the gadget shown on Fig. 4, Plate LXX, was inserted in one of the pairs of bolt holes near the center of the plate, and was held in position by the running nut at one end.",
"author": "Brace, James H. and Mason, Francis",
"title": "The New York Tunnel Extension of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Cross-Town Tunnels.",
"source": "Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers. vol. 68, Paper no. 1158. 1910. p. 460",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1912,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "cog;propername",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Fig. 14 shows method of erecting the segments on the upper quarter. The segments were attached to the erector bar by a gadget with a large nut on one plain screwed end, and a flanged spigot on the other; the nut was run back far enough to insert the gadget, and the nut was spun by hand very quickly to lock it in place. This is a very effective way of lifting the segments and saved the expense of casting iron lugs on each segment. The cast iron in the four tunnels represents about 100,000 tons; each segment weight about one ton, so about 100,000 lugs were saved.",
"author": "Japp, Henry",
"title": "Subaqueous Tunneling",
"source": "The Engineer's Club of Philadelphia vol 29 1912",
"notes": "On the East River Tunnel project",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1935,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "cog;rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Centering comes next. When the lenses are polished, the dish is removed, clamping nut H (Figure 4) unscrewed and the spindle brought horizontal. For centering I use an attachment (Figure 4) that slips over the seat formerly occupied by the dish. This gadget comprises the rod K carrying the edging plate L and a screw M acting against an arm of K, and the guard N. The right adapter (A in c, Figure 6) is pressed on the tapered spindle end and a little hot pitch daubed on the flange at B.",
"author": "Ingalls, Albert G.",
"title": "The Amateur Astronomer",
"source": " Scientific American 152, (April 1935). p. 202-221",
"notes": "On constructing a device that makes telescope lenses, for those hobbyists looking to create the entire telescope from scratch.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1958,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "cog;tool",
"secondary": "definition",
"quote": "Technological innovations have been as important as language, art and science in distinguishing man from beast. And although technological innovation antedates our species, it has never before occupied so great a share of man's energies. / Our works are built on old foundations––on obsolete inventions such as the hand-ax and the bow no less than on inventions that have survived, such as agriculture and the wheel. But during most of human history technological art accumulated gradually. Up to a few hundred years ago, the techniques of civilized life had scarcely advanced beyond the best achievements of the ancients. Then our control over the forces of nature began to increase at an explosive rate. […] In this article we shall examine some recent advances to see what light they throw on the creative process in the complex of technology today. What do we mean by technological innovation? Surely not the tail fins on this year's automobile, nor a new catch on a refrigerator door. A true innovation must perform some important function. It may do a wholly new job or do an old job far better or far more cheaply than it was done before. […] …I will discuss some reasonably noncontroversial innovations made at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, where I am employed, under circumstances which I believe I understand. […] As our final example of innovation in technology let us consider briefly the microwave-relay system which carries telephone conversations and television programs across the country without the use of cables. The key word here is 'system.' The problem was not to make a particular device, but to weld a great number of devices into a complex whole. Some of the deices were available at the start; others had to be developed. But the chief innovation was the choice, among the many alternative methods and devices, of the best combination of methods and devices--the system as a whole, and not merely its adequate parts. […] [Harold T.] Friis's main problem, then, was not to invent this gadget or that, but to choose the best course, technically and economically, among a bewildering array of possibilities. The art of making such a choice is usually called systems engineering when the alternative means and the required knowledge are all at hand. When they are not, I suppose it should be called systems research. By 1948 the results of the research of Friis and his colleagues had been embodied in an experimental system which was installed between New York and Boston. This was the prototype of the transcontinental microwave system, which was put into service in 1951.",
"author": "Pierce, John R.",
"title": "Innovation in Technology",
"source": "Scientific American 199, (September 1958). p. 116-133",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1937,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gag",
"secondary": "patent",
"quote": "Gag, 'a joke or imposture; a hoax.' Gadget, 'a contrivance, object or device; a term often used to denote something novel'--slang. Gimmick, 'any small device used secretly by a magician in performing a trick.'\" \"The author, while performing professionally, from 1908 until 1921, when he entered the radio broadcasting field at WLW, Cincinnati, believed he had originated many new ideas in magic, only to find that someone else had the same ideas. A memorandum book, with the idea and date of its creation, with a signature of a witness, is necessary to prove originality in lawful court, and therefore, it is a suggestion, that should you develop a new idea in magic, follow this procedure.",
"author": "Plough, Alvin Richard",
"title": "",
"source": "Gags, Gadgets, Gimmicks: For Magicians. Colon, Michigan: The Abbott Magic Novelty Company. 1937.",
"notes": "Quoting Webster's Intn'l dictionary No. 2: ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1939,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gag",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Gadget sticks out tongue at noisy driver. New device gives 'razz' to silly auto horn tutors. […] Millions of motorists have wanted a gadget of this type for years, and Fooey Face has now been placed on the market.",
"author": "",
"title": "\"Fooey Face\"",
"source": "Popular Mechanics. Jul 1939. p. 147A",
"notes": "advertisement",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1943,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "gag",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Jesse also invented a mowing machine which he sold to McCormick, a whistling buoy, and practical joke gadgets. Taking a fancy to Simon, Uncle Jesse brought him into his foundry and taught him to use tools. That shop was Simon Lake's university.",
"author": "Machester, Harland",
"title": "Simon Lake, Submarine Genius",
"source": "Scientific American 168, (March 1943). p. 120-123",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1963,
"decade": 1960,
"primary": "gag",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "Each subject was told that his task was to transport all the weights in the wagon from one side of a table ('Lawrence') to the other side ('Topeka'), that the wheels must roll freely, that he could make as many trips as he wished and that there were no hidden tricks or gadgets on the wagon––that its rolling was a function of the among of weight in it.",
"author": "Scheerer, Martin",
"title": "Problem-Solving",
"source": "Scientific American 208, (April 1963). p. 118-132",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1974,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "gag",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "I felt an anxiety building up in my chest. I became so agitated that I dropped my writing pad, and my pencil rolled out of sight. Don Juan and don Genaro immediately began a most farcical search for it. I had never seen a more astonishing performance of theatrical magic and sleight of hand. Except that there was no stage, or props, or any type of gadgetry, and the performers did not seem to be using sleight of hand. Don Genaro, the head magician, and his assistant, don Juan, produced in a matter of minutes the most astounding, bizarre, and outlandish collection of objects which they found underneath, or behind, or above every object within the periphery of the Jumada. In the style of stage magic, don Genaro would proceed to find an object, which he would throw away as soon as he had attested that it was not […]",
"author": "Castaneda, Carlos",
"title": "A Tale of Power",
"source": "Harpers. September 1974.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1975,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "gag",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Of what use are they except as criminal weapons? With attempts at gun control, how about knife control? As a start, how about a Sullivan Law banning all knife sales to juveniles and banning the sale of novelty knives in souvenir and gadget stores in the Times Square area and elsewhere? Stabbing homicides may take a sharp drop if these steps are taken.",
"author": "",
"title": "Letters",
"source": "New York Times. 13 March 1975.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1904,
"decade": 1900,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "british;lit",
"quote": "He stood up and steadied himself by a stanchion, in the middle of the front seat, which carried the big acetylene lamp. / 'This is like the gyroscope gadget on the Portsmouth submarines. Does she dive?' said he.",
"author": "Kipling, Rudyard",
"title": "A Tour of Inspection",
"source": "The Metropolitan Magazine. v21n1. October, 1904. p. 4",
"notes": "a story of cars and gearheads",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1916,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "british",
"quote": "",
"author": "Lodge, Sir Oliver J.",
"title": "Raymond, or Life and Death: With Examples of the Evidence for Survival of Memory and Affection After Death",
"source": "",
"notes": "Letter from Lieutennt William Roscoe to Sir Oliver Lodge, who was a machine gun operator. A collection of letters and reminiscences of hauntings from Sir Oliver Lodge, key inventor of wireless telegraphy. See Susan J. Douglas and Jeffrey Sconce. ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1918,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "british",
"quote": "War tempts imaginative, restless people, and a stagnant peace bores them. And you've got to reckon with intelligence and imagination in this world, Nobby, more than anything. … INventive, restless men are the particular instruments of my Old Experimenter. Under no circumstances can you hope to induce the chap who contrived the clock fuse and the chap who worked out my gas bag or the chap with a new aeroplane gadget, and me--me, too-- to stop celebrating and making our damndest just in order to sit about safely in meadows joining up daisy chains--like a beastly lot of figures by Walter Crane.\" Gadgets as the wonderful and seductive tools produced by a wartime nation",
"author": "Wells, H.G",
"title": "Joan and Peter: The Story of an Education",
"source": "",
"notes": "Gadgets as the wonderful and seductive tools produced by a wartime nation.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1918,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "british",
"quote": "A patent gadget invented by Guns [the gunnery officer] allowed the gun-muzzles a certain amount of play up and down, play which careful calculation showed would pour a couple of streams of bullets across the end of the wood up and down a height extending to about a thousand feet, that is, 500 above and 500 below the level at which it was estimated the Huns usually flew on these night raids. It simply meant that as soon as the sound was judged to be near enough the two guns only had to open fire, to keep pouring out bullets to make sure that the Huns had to fly through the stream and 'stop one' or more. It was, in fact, a simple air barrage of machine-gun bullets.",
"author": "Cable, Boyd",
"title": "Front Lines",
"source": "New York: E.P. Dutton & Company. 1918. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1918,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "war;list",
"quote": "On a dashboard in front of the pilot are various engine controls, comprising an independent throttle lever for each engine, a revolution counter, spark controls for both magnetos, a grease pump, gasoline regulator, and various other 'gadgets.' The flying controls do not differ in any particular way from those of the ordinary machine, the Deperdussin wheel type being adopted. Naturally, they are much more powerful, and by an ingenious system of springs worked round a small hand-winch close to the pilot's seat, the elevator can be locked in any position desired.",
"author": "Williams, Bertram W. ",
"title": "Recent Enemy Aircraft: How the Germans Make the Most of Information Obtained Through Captured Allied Planes",
"source": "Scientific American. October 5, 1918, p. 274",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1919,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "trivial;british",
"quote": "But the Rolls-Royce Company would never pay big dividends upon the patronage or custom of the minority who buy their cars as toys--to play with all the intriguing little gadgets with which they are fitted.\" (124) / \"The motor car trade is a 'fashion' trade, just as much as ladies' hats, and if there is a desire for taper bonnets or pointed radiators, or any of the many gadgets we have to fit, it is necessary to conform to that desire, or else the car is difficult to sell.\" (140) / IN THE RETORT/CONVERSATION: \"The author cannot seriously suggest that the gadgets designed into the majority of cars, especially the high-priced types, are undesirable fads. That would be an insult to the intelligence of their sponsors, who are presumably men who know their jobs both on the technical and financial side. Any gadgets embodied in a design are, rightly or wrongly, provided for a specific purpose and achieve some refinement which a competitor's car does not possess. I say rightly or wrongly, as they do not always fulfil [sic] expectation.\" (143) / \"I really cannot help wondering whether all the gadgets on those big, magnificent cars we aw at Olympia are really necessary, when I can get equal or greater comfort, smoothness and quietness without them. IT is very nice, of course, to be able to sit back in a chair and adjust the petrol-feed of the carburettor to such a degree that the mixture can be gradually varied while under way. It is beautiful for the man who wants to do it, but the very man who buys a GBP 2,000 car does not do it.\" (148) / \"The man who can afford GBP2,000 for a chassis , who can afford all the gadgets in the world, and who sits in the car while his man does the rest, does not care how many gadgets the car is fitted with, so long as he gets from his house to his office in time.\" (157) / \"As a designer I object to exaggerated smoothness of design, and though at a Motor Show clean outline may look charming, I feel that external smoothness can be overdone. The question of suiting the springing of a car to the load in the car has always been rather a fancy of mine, and although it is an extra gadget I think it will shortly be fitted on a number of cars. I do not say it is a good thing on every car, but there are plenty of people who will appreciate a device which will ensure equally good suspension, whether the car is light or loaded. […] As far as other gadgets go, such as controllable carburettors, I must say I do feel that if the owner drives his car--and we are always being told that owners will drive, and not have chauffeurs--he will appreciate them. A water circulation thermometer is a 'gadget,' but I find it very useful.",
"author": "Duffield, Edgar",
"title": "Car Design and Car Usage: A Plea for the Fuller Appreciation by Car Designers of the LImited Mechanical Knowledge and Engineering Sense of Those who Buy Cars, Together With Some Notes of a Few Directions in Which Design Should be Modified With Advantage Equally to Manufacturer and User",
"source": "Proceedings of the Institution of Automobile Engineers. vol. 14. 1919",
"notes": "Over and against \"lazy\" users who never fill up their cars with lubricant or cooling water, or know anything about the machine or maintain it. Interestingly, the rebuttal does not say, \"these are not gadgets,\" i.e. these features are not trivial or mere fashion, but that \"gadgets\" achieve a specific purpose and refinement in the design. In this article, we are debating the very usage of the term gadget--is it trivial, or a vital element of good design? Is it truly useful, or merely a distraction or window dressing? Gadget not used just for the gauge or mechanism added on, but for the operation or function itself--i.e. suiting the springing of a car to the weight in that car is a \"gadget.\" ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1919,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "british",
"quote": "he would turn up suddenly, by air or road, with an oily old raincoat, a long lurching stride, a deep voice, a noisy laugh and a tentative unsymmetrical smile half-hidden by a large grey-brown moustache: and would proceed at once to 'touch off' a rocket, to fire incendiary bullets into a gas-bag or a petrol-tin, to inspect some new 'gadget' for a machine-gun, or to practise some other of the many strange arts of which Orfordness was the home.",
"author": "",
"title": "Colonel Bertram Hopkinson -- An Appreciation",
"source": "The Alpine Journal. no. 219. June 1919. p. 353",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1919,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "We don't let' em see, neither, if we can 'elp it. Once or twice Turkish (mime' ve seen us at play, but they only laughs. They 'ates the Huns a blurry sight more 'n we do. Why, I remember when a coupler Turks' elped us in the good work one mornin'. \" \" Guns an' aererplanes is' andiest, \" he continued, reflectively. \" Yer see, when we finds the breech-block uv a gun it don't take long to take aht some gadget er other, accordin' as the gunners with us sez. Aererplanes we attacks mostly on the longeerongs? those ribs o' wood that runs claim the length of the body, ain't they? English pilot' oo passed dahn the line some months ergo give us the tip.' Corse, we gives the other parts a bit uv attention? wires an' spars, an' such like.... No, it don't seem likely that those things over there'll fly fer.",
"author": "Bott, Alan",
"title": "Eastern Nights––and Flights",
"source": "Harpers. September 1919. pp. 563-571",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1923,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "trivial;british",
"quote": "It would be more than folly to think that it is necessary to produce a freak design, or to plaster the chassis with gadgets, just because an attempt is being made to reach a market in which the conditions are so very different from those at home.",
"author": "Acres, F.A. Stepney",
"title": "The Requirements of the Colonial Market",
"source": " Proceedings of the Institution of Automobile Engineers. v. 18. 1923. p. 626",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1923,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Somebody has suggested that the installation of thermostats, shutters, etc., is a confession of weakness; that a properly designed cooling plant ought to cool the car without the necessity for tinkering with it to meet the vagaries of the weather. The fact is, of course, that overcooling is just as objectionable as constant boiling; and that the only way in which a proper mean can be maintained is by a system that modifies its cooling capacity according to the weather. At the same time, the thing can be carried to an unnecessary degree of fineness. During the season when thermostats are busy and shutters working overtime, while those who do not possess these gadgets fall back mainly upon the use of newspaper and cardboard shields over the lower part of their radiators, the driver whose front-end design makes it possible for him to slip off his fan belt will be able to achieve much the same result in this way, and with a saving of power.",
"author": "",
"title": "Automobile Notes",
"source": "Scientific American 128, 139-146 (February 1923)",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1923,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "The addition of a fifteenth instrument without doubt gives the car that possesses it a modicum of greater luxury than is enjoyed by the driver with but 14 assorted gadgets at his disposal. But we would rather have the presence of a large variety of non-essentials on the dash regarded as a matter of minor interest--of interest undoubtedly, but not of such paramount importance as to be worth a whole page of ecstasy at current advertising rates.",
"author": "",
"title": "Inventions New and Interesting",
"source": "Scientific American 128, (February 1923), p. 115-118 ",
"notes": "Subsection: \"A cigar-lighter for the chauffeur.\" ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1925,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The famous Handley Page slotted wing, shown diagrammatically in our sketch, when open actually increases the maximum lift between fifty and seventy percent! Its incorporation involves many mechanical difficulties, and aeronautical engineers always like to leave their wings free of all 'gadgets' or complications. Nevertheless, this tremendous increase in lift may very well be utilized one day either to diminish landing speeds or to increase the carrying capacity of our planes.",
"author": "Klemin, Alexander",
"title": "Learning to Use Our Wings",
"source": "Scientific American 132, (April 1925), p. 269-274 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1926,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Well, gimme the works, and I'll show you how it's done [wiring a \"spotlight\" to the car], and then when you buy a cigar lighter or some other gadget in another town, where they haven't a good-natured garageman to wire it for you, you can do the job yourself.",
"author": "",
"title": "Connecting Electric Accessories on the Automobile",
"source": " Popular Mechanics, jan 1926, p. 147.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1928,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "ad",
"quote": "It contains full particulars of the unique Gramophone Service for Records by Post, Records on Approval, the Exchange of Gramophones and Records. Motors, Tone Arms, Soundboxes, and every possible Gadget and Accessory connected with the Gramophone free and post free.",
"author": "",
"title": "Everything for the Gramophone",
"source": "The Gramophone, vol. 6. 1928",
"notes": "ad",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1928,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The Handley Page or Lachmann slot has been applied to actual airplanes with success. Its wider adoption is a matter of the mechanical complexities its use involves, of the objections that constructors and pilots have to the use of 'gadgets,' and of doubts as to its mechanical reliability in rough service.",
"author": "Klemin, Alexander",
"title": "Learning to Use Our Wings",
"source": "Scientific American 138, (February 1928), p. 160-161",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1928,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "Doubtless there are devices which might in some cases assist a trapped crew to escape. But the device which may save life in one contingency will be useless in another and all submaries would be handicapped and their buoyancy seriously curtailed for the one problematical case when such apparatus would be useful. […] So the gain would be worse than doubtful. considered purely from the viewpoint of personal safety, all naval officers prefer a ship which can fight to one cluttered up with 'safety' gadgets; witness for instance the fact that a battleship carries no life boats. It is an old saying that 'a bright look-out is the best lifeboat,' and that principle applies to every sort of ship.",
"author": "Rowland, John T.",
"title": "The 'Why' of the 'S-4' Disaster.",
"source": "Scientific American 138, (March 1928) p. 219-221",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1929,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "A 'Gadget' for Focussing: [sic] A small negative of smoked glass, with a clear cross scratched on it, fixed at another part of this holder in the same plane as the one to be enlarged from at times very useful for focussing purposes.",
"author": "",
"title": "",
"source": "The Photographic Journal: Including the Transactions of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, Photographic Society of London. vol. 69. 1929. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1930,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "Can you get one and fit it to my car? The circular says it's a new invention that will give twice as much mileage on the same gasoline and make the motor more powerful. … I've seen this one before. It's a phoney gadget that doesn't work. … Of course, they'd get better results by adjusting the carburetor for a leaner mixture without bothering with any extra gadget.",
"author": "",
"title": "You Can't Save Gas with Gadgets -- Better to Adjust Car's Carburetor Than Fool with Useless Devices, Says Gus",
"source": "Popular Science Monthly, July 1930",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1930,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The entire inventory of materials which C.A. Olson, Oakland Avenue, West­wood, New Jersey, used in making his mirror may be seen in the photograph reproduced below. With the exception of the pitch lap, a few chemicals used in silvering the glass, and other inexpensive gadgets, the whole array is of the kind that can be picked up around the average household and is typical of the kind used in telescope making. Note absence of tools; none are used.",
"author": "",
"title": "The Amateur Astronomer",
"source": "Scientific American 142, (February 1930). p. 160-162",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1930,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "In our July 1930 issue we described the very interesting experiments of Dr. Geer of Ithaca, whereby rubber, oil-impregnated airplane \"overshoes\" seem to have met the danger of ice formation. It still remains to be seen whether practical aviators will resort to these overshoes. Airmen have a horror of gadgets, and operators may fear that the added cost and a possible decrease in aerodynamic efficiency will be prohibitive. In the meantime it is the consensus that it is a very sound plan to warn the pilot that he is flying in a danger zone, namely where temperatures are between -4 degrees and 0 degrees, centigrade, and when he had better proceed to a zone of higher or lower temperatures.",
"author": "McHugh, F.D. et al.",
"title": "Scientific American 143, (September 1930). p. 212-228",
"source": "",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1931,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "One thing is certain: manufacturers of automobile accessories are going to be affected by the general trend toward complete equipment on the newer cars. No longer need the new·car buyer invest a substantial sum in heat indicators, mirrors, ash trays, air cleaners, oiling systems, and so on.They are all there when the car is delivered.On the other hand, those of us who have, of necessity or choice, to keep our old cars for another season, constitute a potential market for \"gadgets\" of various kinds that have been developed since our cars were made.",
"author": "",
"title": "Across the Editor's Desk",
"source": " Scientific American 144, (February 1931). p. 77-78",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1931,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "There is no question but that the American working man is our biggest customer. He knows that his net income is very much higher under the high wage system than under the other; his percentage of \"luxury\" or \"pleasure\" cash is much greater under the former than under the latter. He has, accordingly adjusted his standard of living to a scale higher than Europeans know or have known. He has a car with all the necessary or foolish gadgets, a six- or eight- or ten-tube radio, good clothes, plenty of good food, and more comforts than a medieval king.",
"author": "",
"title": "Our Point of View",
"source": "Scientific American 145, (July 1931). p. 12-13",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1932,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "The answer is a multiple one : The use of rear flaps changes the trim or balance, and therefore stability has to be carefully considered when flaps or variable-area wings are used; human nature is conservative pilots dislike intensely everything that partakes of the character of a \"gadget\"; cost and weight are always in­ creased no matter what slot or flap is applied.",
"author": "",
"title": "Lift Increase Devices",
"source": " Scientific American 147, (October 1932) p. 232-251",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1933,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "He realized that they were without his beloved 'gadgets' and dependent upon the skill of the pilot alone. And he was one of the newer school, one of these youngsters 'softened' by all the mechanical aids developed to lift the burden from their shoulders!\" … young pilot decides to fly through: \"He was flying blind, solely by his instruments. All of the gadgets which Pop had lavished upon the ships with the idea of making up for the deficiencies of the pilots were useless.\" … \"The gadget I've missed, forgotten, clean overlooked in my calculations is the cool head of the pilot, my boy! That's what it is! I've been thinking the breed had changed, softened up from the old days. Well, they have changed at that! They have grown better! Shake hands, pilot!",
"author": " Leyson, Captain Burr",
"title": "The Missing Gadget",
"source": "Boys' Life. Apr 1933",
"notes": " state of the art airline, each plane decked out with all the gadgets imaginable. but generator burns out in the middle of flying through a storm…potential idea that a sufficient collection of gadgets could replace intelligence -- that the human mind or operator is no more than a collection of gadgets himself.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1934,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "standard;trivial",
"quote": "Don't buy 'gas savers,' 'grease absorbers,' or 'burner protectors.' They don't save a penny; in fact, they usually cost more by increasing gas bills and many of them cause headaches, or worse effects of that stealthy and dangerous poison, cordon monoxide. / The National Bureau of Standards has conducted an investigation of a number of gadgets and appliances that were sold over the doorsill by salesmen who lauded them to the skies in extravagant claims of their value. The results of this research called for a warning against such purchases, which the Bureau issued.\" / All of the 'gas savers,' it stated, affected the operation of a satisfactory gas range in such a way as to increase the tendency to form carbon monoxide, which even in very small amounts is injurious to health. Although agents sometimes boasted of a reduction in gas bills as high as 30 percent, none of the attachments tested increased efficiency appreciably, while some of them considerably increased the amount of gas need for certain purposes.",
"author": "McHugh, F.D.",
"title": "Hazards in Economy",
"source": "Scientific American 151, (October 1934) p. 200-221",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1935,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "list",
"quote": "After he has gotten the \"hang of the thing\" and achieved some success with his hobby, the camera fan begins to be attracted to the innumerable \"gadgets\" being offered by the various manufacturers. There is the angle view finder, by means of which the photographer may take pictures unsuspected by the subject; the reflex attachment for converting the Leica or Contax type camera into a reflex camera, thus combining two types of camera in one; the panorama tripod head which permits the miniature camera to do the work of a regular panorama camera; apparatus for converting the cameras into a stereoscopic camera; attachments for photo­ micrography; flash lamps accommodating flash bulbs which may be attached to the camera and made to operate simultaneously with the release of the shutter so that flash and shutter act together; single-exposure attachment with focusing device for close-ups of 10 inches; copying attachments, and many other devices allowing the owner of the miniature camera unlimited scope in his camera adventures, including even col­or photography.",
"author": "Deschin, Jacob",
"title": "The Miniature Camera",
"source": "Scientific American 152, (February 1935) p. 68-69",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1935,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "In one type, deflectors, consisting of small airfoils, are placed at the side of the wind­ shield and slightly ahead of the screen proper. When these deflectors were turned into the wind, it was found by scientific wind tunnel test that the velocity of the wind outside the cockpit but in the lee of the deflector was reduced to negligible pro­ portions. Therefore the pilot could look out at the side of the cockpit without discomfort. In another type the windshield is divided into two parts, and so arranged that the upper part can be staggered ahead of the lower part. Wind tunnel tests showed here that the air was deflected upwards with­ out any perceptible draught being felt in the cockpit, yet vision through the open­ ing was perfect. While open cockpits are now rarer than was the case a few years ago, anyone flying in an open ship might do worse than to 'use one or the other of these two gadgets.",
"author": "",
"title": "New Windshields for Bad Weather",
"source": "Scientific American 152, (April 1935). p. 202-221",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1937,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "From time to time we have mentioned in this department various new picture markets. We cannot urge too strongly that the amateur attempt to tackle these markets and see if he can't make them pay for a new camera or some of those expensive gadgets, not to speak of just humdrum necessities such as film and paper and chemicals. Good picture markets are the picture agencies who take your pictures on an outright purchase or commission basis and try to sell them to newspapers and magazines.",
"author": "",
"title": "Making Your Hobby Pay",
"source": " Scientific American 157, (October 1937). p. 224-252",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1938,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "cog",
"quote": "Write me today and ask for the new Bass Bargaingrams … bigger and better than ever before. Two separate editions … one for the STill Camera addict (fan, enthusiast) filled with thousands of fascinating items, cameras, gadgets, etc., and the other a veritable compendium (encyclopedia) of apparatus, impediments and incunabula for 8 and 16 mm Movie (CINE) operation … Send for one or both … but mention which. They're free.",
"author": "",
"title": "Bass Camera Co",
"source": "Scientific American 159, (September 1938). p.152-158",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1939,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "His 'crash rodeo,' however, is more than an exhibition of nerve. It is a demonstration of precise planning and of the value of mechanical safeguards. For gadgets play a stellar role in his escapes from death.\" i.e.: \"A sponge-rubber kneeling pad, of the type used by housewives and gardeners, is fastened to the top of the rear fender. This enables the stunt man to remove the saddle post and sit far back on the machine, with his body low over the gas tank. … Another safety measure is a pad fastened tightly to the top of the motor-cycle frame.",
"author": "",
"title": "Daredevil Cyclist Cheats Death With Gadgets",
"source": " Popular Science. Dec 1939.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1939,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "We have been accused of being a nation of gadget collectors; collectors of camera accessories that are bought solely for the purpose of acquiring more gadgets. So what? What finer gadget can you acquire than a gleaming telephoto lens, a combination of steel, glass, and chromium that is beautiful to lok at, that functions like a piece of clockwork and that is a thrill to own? Acquire your gadgets if you can afford it. Buy more lenses, more filters, more copying devices, lanterns, enlargers, and every other device you can afford if you will use them. Learn how they operate; learn the function of every colored filter you get, try out the enlarger under every different condition you can think of and then you will have a real excuse in buying all the different things. But, if you don't use htem, then there is no excuse for them and eventually you will sell them to some other amateur who will make use of them and at a bargain.\" SAME ISSUE: Beers, Nathan Thomas. \"The Miniature Camera\": \"Gadgets and Short-Cuts.--In the ustle which frequently becomes necessary in the processing of exposures made in connection with one's profesiosnal work, any gadget or short-cut calculated to save time is certain to be acceptable. There are many of us who have learned the convenience of the miniature camera in making photographic records… […] Figure 1 shows a little gadget which has served us very satisfactorily as a rest or cradle in which to place the reel while being loaded. The M-shaped section may be turned up of tin or aluminum, or made of wood. Ours was made of a sheet of Monel metal and is mounted on a block of wood on the bottom of which four felt corn-plasters serve to give a little grip on the table or bench. […] Figure 2 shows how a tell-tale made by a bit of folded card, and slipped into the finder-=clip, tells at a glance exactly the contents of the film magazine or whether the camera be empty. Where one makes use of two or more cameras of this type this little gadget saves much time. On one side may be printed or written the name of the film being used and on the reverse side the word 'empty.'",
"author": "Buxbaum, Edwin C.",
"title": "Cures for Photography Boredom",
"source": "American Photography. June, 1939. p. 432. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1939,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "love",
"quote": "The gadgets! My heart jumped. I at once envisioned the sly gadget, the lovely gadget, gadget par excellence--the angle view-finer. There were a dozen other gadgets in the gadget-bag, a photo-electric exposure-meter, filters, telescopic lenses. They were there for duty.",
"author": "",
"title": "",
"source": "The Menorah Journal. vol. 27 issue 1. p. 41-44.",
"notes": "Here we see love, obsession with the gadget cropping up. Also, wonderful description of not just the fetish for gadgetry, but the materiality of gadgets themselves. A particular moment in the history of gadgetry where the word refers to media technologies, but not the small portable device itself, but to accessories. ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1939,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "design",
"quote": "Chromium plated gadgets and super-streamlining will sell an automobile, but to keep it sold without complaints is the reason why manufacturers maintain elaborate inspection equipment. for example: at the right is shown one of the tests employed by one motor-car maker. Steering knuckles are being magnetized prior to inspection for forging flaws.",
"author": "",
"title": "Looking for Trouble",
"source": " Scientific American 161, (July 1939). p. 25",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1939,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": " It's a vast and controversial subject, this matter of guns and ammunition, and there may be times when you heartily disagree with what we have to say. By the same token there will be other instances when you are in accord with the thoughts expressed, but in any event, it is your department, conducted for your pleasure and your information. Ranging through the fields of shot­ guns, rifles, handguns, their applications, ammunitions, and all their various affiliated gadgets, we plan to present unusual and informative angles, current news, and timely data on new developments. Our mail box is of generous proportions-we sincerely trust you will test its capacity to the fullest extent.",
"author": "Rathbone, A.D.",
"title": "Your Firearms",
"source": "Scientific American 161, (November 1939). p. 302-303",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1940,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "ad",
"quote": "This is the only way I can keep abreast of the terrific pace that the gadgeteers set for me. My shop is filled with these so called aids to better pictures. If you go for truck-loads of trinkets … this is YOUR heaven … or haven. I've got them all listed in my new and beautifully illustrated Still Camera Bargaingram No. 242.",
"author": "",
"title": "Bass Camera Co.",
"source": "Scientific American 162, (April 1940). p. 222-246",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1941,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "With all these built-in gadgets the camera looks lie ka Lilliputian anti-aircraft position detector, and five months went into its construction. But the desired result has been achieved--that of combining the quick-working facilities of the Speed Graphic with the advantage of changing from one focal length to another…",
"author": "Caldwell, Erskine and Margaret Bourke-White",
"title": " Say, is this the U.S.A.",
"source": "Duell, Sloan, and Pearce. 1941. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1941,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "When you look at the gun illustrated below, note particularly the two little gadgets shown under the barrel and the similar gadget on the end of the barrel. The gun itself is a 20-gage, bolt-action, repeating shotgun with detachable clip of two-shot capacity--and a third in the chamber, if desired. But the three little gadgets comprise the crux of this story, for they are machined choke tubes, easily and quickly interchangeable, thereby producing a three-shot scattergun with full choke, modified choke, or improved cylinder choke, as may be desired. And by shooting the gun without any tube attached, you get a true cylinder which, although offering no control over the pattern, is still preferred by some shooters.",
"author": "Rathbone, A.D.",
"title": "Your Firearms and Fishing Tackle: Three Little Gadgets",
"source": "Scientific American 165, (August 1941). p. 104-105 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1942,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "british;list",
"quote": "The very names 'dash' or 'splash' board, which, it is believed, were synonymous as applied to earlier vehicles automatically explain the original intended use of this particular part of a vehicle body. That is to say, it was the barrier erected between the horse as the means of propulsion and the passengers carried in the vehicle so propelled. The only instrument likely to be found on these earliest vehicles was possibly a dashboard clock.\" … \"There appear to have been over a period of years two schools of thought of as regards dashboard equipment, the first extreme being in the direction of fitting the dashboard with almost every conceivable form of gadget which the ingenuity of man has devised, amongst these instruments and knobs being some of the essential ones and many nonessential ones. A rough list would comprise speedometer, clock. petrol gauge, revolution counter, oil pressure gauge, water thermometer, oil thermometer, ammeter, starter switch and light switches, dynamo-charging warning light, oil pressure warning light, cigar lighter, car heater, radio and choke controls, brake self-servo warning light, octane selector, and even such devices as trafficator indicators, time switch for lights, battery level indicators, radiator water level indicators, and possibly others which do not come to mind at the moment. Even some of these have not been commercially produced.",
"author": "Browne, D. Bennion",
"title": "A Study of Dashboard Instrument Development",
"source": " Proceedings of the Institution of Automobile Engineers. v. 36. 1942. p. 179",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1942,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Navy ingenuity is not confined to these larger items [i.e. aircraft carriers]; any number of important devices and much aircraft material were conceived and developed by the Bureau of Aeronautics. Included is the carrier arresting gear, very secret and said to be finest in use anywhere; flotation gear to, keep both plane and pilot afloat after emergency landings; the Sperry bombing sight, which gained fame in Army hands, but which was originally built to Navy specifications; a vital process for corrosion-proofing of aircraft metals; and many important gadgets and instruments which are the brain children of the design and engineering divisions of the Naval Aircraft Factory.",
"author": "Peck, James L. H.",
"title": "Our Navy's Air Arm",
"source": "Scientific American 166, (March 1942). p. 121-123",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1942,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The simplicity of cold-cathode fluorescent lighting is another basic reason for the growing popularity of this form of illumination. There are no accessories or starting gadgets of any sort required. Just the tubing and the transformer complete the equipment proper. When the power switchis closed, the tubing lights up instantly, at full illumination. There is no delay, no sputtering, no flickering. With the absence of starters or accessories, there is virtually nothing to get out of order.",
"author": "Lescarboura, Austin C.",
"title": "Fluorescent LIghting Stretches Out",
"source": "Scientific American 167, (October 1942), p. 167-169",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1942,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "Drive clean, simple, free from gadgets and hickerpickers, made by N.J. Schell, 1019 Third Avenue, Beaver Falls, Pa., is shown in Figure 5. Asked to describe it, Schell writes: 'The drive is used with an equatorial which has for its upper polar bearing a large cast iron flange, or plate, which rolls on two ball-bearing rollers (Porters design, I believe). I found it would be necessary to re-build the whole thing if a worm-wheel was to be used, so tried using a thin band or belt of phosphor-bronze (continuous) which passes around both rollers and under the large flange. This band is just taut when the weight is on it.",
"author": "Ingalls, Albert G.",
"title": "Telescoptics",
"source": "Scientific American 167, (November 1942). p. 238-240",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1943,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "american",
"quote": "Our fighter planes are almost as fast, and certainly as well protected and armed as any in the world, and are provided with every instrument, accessory, or gadget that it is possible to think of. These planes also are exceedingly robust-far more robust that the almost \"delicate\" Zero, for example. There has, however, been a tendency in American fighter design to use too much strength and weight, too many gadgets, instruments, and ac­cessories, and finally, to load the wing, in pounds per square foot, to very high values. The result is they lack, perhaps, in maneuverability-the ability to roll, or to dive very rapidly when detaching them­ selves from the enemy.",
"author": "Klemin, Alexander",
"title": "When Engineers Meet: Aeronautical Experts Contract a Sort of Mental Indigestion that is Good for the Whole Country.",
"source": "Scientific American 168, (May 1943). p. 232-233",
"notes": "On the yearly meeting of the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1949,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "An old-timer knew what he had to do in a jam. He didn't need hundreds of those gadgets to guide him to safety.",
"author": "Leyson, Captain Burr",
"title": "With or Without Gadgets",
"source": " Boys' Life. Nov 1949. p. 6.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1949,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The Gadgets: The five-year stage of the program, scheduled to be in full operation by the winder of 1953-54, calls for the installation and standard use of nine major weather-beating devices. … \"Because ILS has some drawbacks, it will be supplemented with this descendant of a wartime invention--again a gadget already in use on a limited scale. … With widespread use of these and the other gadgets, plus a few lesser improvements, SC-31 [the plan] declares that weather hazards will be pretty much under control.",
"author": "",
"title": "Safe All-Weather Flying. New Gadgets Promise New Air Safety",
"source": "Changing Times: The Kiplinger Magazine. Oct 1949.",
"notes": "Recommendation from Air Navigation Development Board for adaptations made to all aircraft. ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1952,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "Davis, Denys",
"quote": "",
"author": "",
"title": "Ciné Hints, Tips, & Gadgets",
"source": "Fountain Press, 1952",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "include title in source?"
},
{
"year": 1953,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "A practical kink for use with a camera gadget bag is to insert plastic panels inside the bag and outside pocket to protect photographic accessories and help maintain the bag's proper shape. Another idea, which eliminates penning the bag repeatedly, is to attach small zipper-type camera cases to the carrying-strap rings of the bag for filters, shades and other small accessories.",
"author": "Winterton, M.G.",
"title": "Useful Kinks for the Camera Gadget Bag",
"source": "Popular Mechanics. Jan 1953. p. 209.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1957,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Hush-A-Phone is a cup-like gadget, on the market since 1921, which fits over the mouthpiece of a telephone. Its purpose is to confine the user's voice in the gadget, thus rendering his conversation private and to keep extraneous noise out of the telephone line, making the circuit quieter. … Telephone companies claimed that the use of Hush-A-Phone violated their tariffs, which forbid the attachment to a telephone of any device 'not furnished by the telephone company.'",
"author": "Rossman, George",
"title": "What's New in the Law: Communications Law -- Telephone Attachments",
"source": "",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1959,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "To some of us, a new car is to drive, to enjoy and, less pleasantly, to pay for. But to others, it's a challenge to invest in gadgets that claim to banish wear, eliminate friction, reduce gas consumption and boost performance.",
"author": "Kelly, Dale",
"title": "How Good are the Gadgets?",
"source": "Popular Mechanics. Jan 1959. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1970,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "But the device-which is designed to screen drunks by testing judgment, visual acuity, short-term memory and coordinated motor response-will also weed out drug users and those who are mentally or physically deficient. To satisfy the demanding gadget, a driver must be able to read the relatively small lighted numbers, memorize them, recall them, and punch them into the keyboard in a coordinated response within a few seconds. If he can perform these functions he is fit for the road. If he cannot-in three tries-the tester shuts off for a half-hour, giving him time to sober up before another attempt. General Motors is aware that the public will not stampede to buy and install the testers, no matter how inexpensive they are.",
"author": "",
"title": "Pushbuttons v. Drunks",
"source": "Time. 1 June 1970. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1970,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "design",
"quote": "It is worth extra money to know that when your washing machine begins that low moan that will end in a gasping jerk and a tub left full of water, you can call for a repairman and have a reasonable chance of having him show up on a not too distant date. In selecting any appliance, buy only the conveniences you need. Every extra working gadget on an appliance increases the possibilities of things going wrong often, it seems, in geometric progression. Each appliance has certain basic functions for saving time and labor. Beyond these, think carefully about each additional feature to decide whether it will be of value to you. The top-of-the-line model in the middle or even the bottom line only in the number of extra, but minor, features plus a little trim here or there. Such features may or may not save time […]",
"author": "Skelsey, Alice",
"title": "The Working Mother's Guide",
"source": "New York: Random House. 1970",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1972,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "In the tradition of the electric toothbrush and the high-speed electric cocktail mixer, the latest effort-saving gadget is the Name Caller, which does away with the need of dialing a telephone. By pressing a button on the device, which can be easily attached to the phone, a user can reach any one of 38 numbers. Besides its speed and convenience, the Name Caller provides a foolproof way for a baby sitter to phone police, firemen or the family doctor in an emergency. The gadget-about the size of a small bathroom scale-has been available for only four months in seven major markets.",
"author": "",
"title": "Name Calling",
"source": "Time Magazine. 18 December 1972.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1972,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "But stuck somewhere in every exhaust system will be a gadget called a catalytic converter. Its job is to get rid of most of two serious polluting components of auto exhaust? hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide. The next year, when the 1976 cars debut, there'll be a device which gets rid of the third deadly sin of auto exhausts? nitrogen oxides.",
"author": "Hey, Robert P. ",
"title": "Car Exhuast Rules: After 76 More May be Needed",
"source": "Christian Science Monitor. 15 May 1972",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1973,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "gauge",
"secondary": "aero",
"quote": "This, however, is a mere drop in the fuel tank when compared with the investments of the Unlimited pilots. Cliff Cummins, a Riverside, Calif. radiologist and consistently star-crossed flyer, estimates that he has sunk some $140,000 into his Mustang fighter in the years he has owned it. Cummins, who was once an Air Force gunnery instructor, belly-landed the Mustang in the Nevada desert three years ago during the Reno air races after a small throttle link snapped. The very same gadget failed him on the sixth lap of the eight-lap semifinal heat in Miami on Saturday. Cummins was leading at the time and had recorded the fastest qualifying-heat time of 376.8 mph earlier in the week.",
"author": "",
"title": "Buzzing to Glory",
"source": "Sports Illustrated. 29 January 1973.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1933,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge ",
"secondary": "trivial;british",
"quote": "I am glad to note that the author stresses the importance of the automobile engineer realising that all these electrical contrivances now used on the motor car are no longer gadgets, but are part of the whole scheme, and it seems to me of fundamental importance that anyone setting out to design an automobile should consider it as one concrete problem, and not put on the starting motor, the dynamo or the other necessary electrical components as afterthoughts. […] The only way we can deal with wiring is to make it as good a job as possible and to guard against chafing. All the same i sometimes wonder whether some of the present electrical gadgets on cars could not be operated just as well mechanically, which would result in a considerable simplification of the wiring. […] There are so many gadgets on cars nowadays consuming current that at times there is very little available for starting the engine.",
"author": "I am glad to note that the author stresses the importance of the automobile engineer realising that all these electrical contrivances now used on the motor car are no longer gadgets, but are part of the whole scheme, and it seems to me of fundamental importance that anyone setting out to design an automobile should consider it as one concrete problem, and not put on the starting motor, the dynamo or the other necessary electrical components as afterthoughts. […] The only way we can deal with wiring is to make it as good a job as possible and to guard against chafing. All the same i sometimes wonder whether some of the present electrical gadgets on cars could not be operated just as well mechanically, which would result in a considerable simplification of the wiring. […] There are so many gadgets on cars nowadays consuming current that at times there is very little available for starting the engine.",
"title": "Electrical Equipment for Automobiles with Special Reference to its Relation to the Vehicle as a Whole.",
"source": "Proceedings of the Institution of Automobile Engineers. v. 27. 1933 p. 240",
"notes": " proposes having two batteries",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1950,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "gauge; handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Regarding the \"utility of the BC-221 frequency meter,\" which can be \"increased considerably by the addition of a null indicator that gives positive indication of exact zero beat between the crystal and the heterodyne oscillator or the signal from a near-by transmitter. A 6E5 'magic eye' tube can be added without circuit complications…\" \"The addition of this gadget has made a big improvement in my BC-221, and it is hoped that others will be able to derive the same benefit…\" \"Needing something in a hurry to replace a smashed neon bulb as an r.f. indicator, I connected a tN34 crystal diode across a 0-1 millimeter as shown at A in Fig. 2. With the addition of a six-inch length of wire as a probe, the gadget can be used for numerous application",
"author": "",
"title": "Technical Topics -- Re: Half-Wave Filters",
"source": " QST: American Radio Relay League. vol. 34. 1950. p. 66.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1908,
"decade": 1900,
"primary": "gauge;placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The chief, with an eye to curbing the speeding proclivities of the automobile set, purchased a motorcycle that was guaranteed to run like the dickens. And it did, too, the first time the chief took the road. Accidentally pressing the wrong gadget or something, the thing bounded away like a stung deer.",
"author": "",
"title": "Runs Away With Chief",
"source": " Motorcycle Illustrated. June, 1908. p. 26. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1915,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "gauge;placeholder",
"secondary": "definition",
"quote": "There are rival methods of achieving this end, some constructors (among them Orville Wright in America) seeking to attain it by 'automatic' and others by 'inherent' stability. The latter speak disrespectfully of the devices of the former; they call them 'gadget' stabilizers. The word is a trifle obscure, inasmuch as 'gadget' is the sea term for any miscellaneous article which does not appear to have a definite name, or at least one which comes ready at the moment. I asked a famous expert the other day to define a 'gadget stabilizer,' and he did s promptly and forcibly as 'any old thing which you hang on.' Less picturesquely an automatic stabilizer is some means of giving stability, such as a gyroscope or a pendulum, which is put to a machine, and is not in itself an essential part of its construction. / The inherent stability people maintain that by careful design and constructino alone, by theorist and practical man working side by side, by scientific disposal of weights and surfaces, different tendencies may be made to balance and correct each other, one set of oscilations to damp out another, and so the perfect machine be evolved. Further they have proved their point by succeeding. The naturally stable machine is no dream of to-morrow but the realization of to-day; not sprung upon us in a moment by some fresh epoch-making discovery, but now arrived at as the consummation of the labours which began with the earliest pioneers.",
"author": "Bacon, Gertrude",
"title": "All About Flying",
"source": "London: Methuen & Co, 34-5",
"notes": "On stability as the battle cry of current aeroplane designers.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1935,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge;raygun",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The true candid camera man is the most self-effacing chap on earth; the more he is ignored, the less he is observed, the better he likes it. Among the array of miniature cameras, accessories and wonder·working films and developing solutions that produce prints which would have been impossible only a few years ago, he wants for but one thing––some magic formula by which he might make himself invisible at will. / Lacking such a formula, however, the exigencies of his 'now-you-see-me-now-you-don't' career have taught him many subterfuges, in which he is ably abetted by a number of 'gadgets.' One of the most useful of these is the so-called angle·view finder, a device which by means of mirrors enables the photographer to give the impression of aiming at something down the street while actually taking the picture of a subject standing at right angles to the photographer's apparent vision. A variation of this, where a low viewpoint is desired, is to point this finder straight down to the floor or sidewalk and become ostensibly immersed in the examination of some mechanical problem of the camera itself.",
"author": "Deschin, Jacob",
"title": "Candid Photography",
"source": "Scientific American 152, (May 1935) p.250-251",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1957,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "gauge;raygun",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Oh, but they're Mighty Mouses,' Jenkins chuckled. 'They're as full of electronic measuring gadgets as these wonderful muffins are of blueberries. … And those gadgets will tel us all about conditions in outer space. They'll make it possible to get a man-carrying satellite up within a few years. We'll fasten a number of such satellites together and make us a space station. After that it should be easy to get to the Moon, or even to Mars and Venus.",
"author": "West, Wallace",
"title": "A Better Mousetrap",
"source": "Boys' Life. June 1957.",
"notes": " Story of kids trying to make contact with a satellite. Satellite the new fad, but this written four months before Sputnik. Still not called satellite at that point. The boys call it Project PLORB--PLacing artificial moons in ORBits. Plays on the phrase \"better mousetrap\" i that they're trying to trap the signal from a satellite carrying a mouse in orbit.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1917,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "gauge;rig",
"secondary": "british",
"quote": "Aviator boys of twenty and eighteen had not thought of any motto at all, but they live up to it. Their only pass words are 'gadget' and 'stunt,' they show you in delight this and that bit of machinery, and it is a 'gadget,' and they do their 'stunts'--eights and inside edges in the air, they seemed to me… […] The gadgets and stunts we have invented for our aviation and observation and photography are marvellous. Each officer shows you his own invention with a boy's delightful pride, devices for signalling, quick methods for flying camp records, codes for announcing each shell where it falls,tricks for simplifying map reading. Something like Y.12.15 sent by wireless means that a shell has burst within so many yards of such an enemy position, and in a certain direction. The precision of aeroplane photographs is wonderful. I saw those of Guillemont before and after our shelling. Before, the minute map of the village; after, a square piece of pockmarked skin; that is exactly what it looked like, with the requisite patience one could have exactly counted the shell holes.",
"author": "",
"title": "On the British Somme",
"source": "The Contemporary Review. no. 114. March, 1917",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1917,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "gauge;rig",
"secondary": "british",
"quote": "Every other officer has a pet mechanical originality. Marmaduke is preparing a small gravity tank for his machine, to be used when the pressure tank is ventilated by a bullet. The Tripehound has a scheme whereby all the control wires can be duplicated. Some one else has produced the latest thing in connections between the pilot's joystick and the Vicker's gun. I am making a spade-grip trigger for the Lewis gun, so that the observer can always have one hand free to manipulate the movable backsight. When one of these deathless inventions is completed the real hard work begins. The gadget is adopted unanimously by the inventor himself, but he has a tremendous task in making the rest of the squadron see its merits.",
"author": "Bott, Alan",
"title": "Cavalry of the Clouds",
"source": "186-87",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1936,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge;rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The question is frequently asked whether it is not cheaper to buy one's photographic accessories than to build them. Such a statement cannot be answered with a blanket reply of 'yes' or 'no' because several factors are involved. What, for instance, is meant by expense? Money or time? From the dollars and cents viewpoint, it may be cheaper to 'make it yourself' but it will, of course, involve time--in some cases, a great deal of time. It is taken for granted, of course, that the home-made article will be made so well that it will work as effectively as the purchased one. / Another point to consider is the 'makeup' of the builder himself. There are some self-sufficient people, sometimes known as the 'handy-man' type, who will never buy an article that they can possibly make themselves. With such persons, the expense of time will be offset by the satisfaction derived from making the desired gadget. / Then there is the factor of whether the accessory in question is available on the market. Certain photographic problems are so peculiar and unusual that nothing remains for the worker to do but to make the required tool himself or to go without it.",
"author": "",
"title": "Buy or Build?",
"source": "Scientific American 155, (September 1936) p. 152-181",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1948,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "gauge;rig;rool",
"secondary": "american",
"quote": "A basic American trait is the keen desire to perfect new gadgets. Those of us who cannot boast of inventions can at least get pleasure out of owning and operating a gadget, whether it is a new can opener or an air conditioner. We are so accustomed to new, unbelievable mechanical equipment that nothing seems beyond the realm of possibility for our houses.\" \"A window is perhaps the most gadget-adaptable spot in a house.",
"author": "Sleeper, Catherine and Harold Reeve Sleeper",
"title": "Gadgets",
"source": "The House For You To Build, Buy, or Rent. Wiley: 1948",
"notes": "FIND THIS. Gadget seen as a mod or add-on to the living situation of the house in general. \"In the chapter on finances, we have included a comprehensive analysis of this Number 1 problem. 'Gadgets' are included simply because we all like them--but they are of secondary importance. Gadgets can be added later, but a poor site or a bad plan is not redeemable.\" Chapter 30 titled \"Gadgets.\"",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1934,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "gauge;vehicle",
"secondary": "definition;nautical;patent",
"quote": "The title, Gadget King of America, was mentioned. / 'I don't know what you mean by that,' he laughed. 'Gadgets aren't things produced and proved by laboratory tests and practical demonstrations. Gadgets are--well, here I'll show you one.' / Wood walked over to a twelve cylinder car. He removed from the dashboard an attractive, nickeled object that was about three inches long. / 'It's an automatic cigaret lighter,' he explained, 'it lights and breathes, inhaling and exhaling, just as you do. All you do is put your cigaret in it, press a button and your cigaret is lighted and puffed on until you take it out. Saves you taking your eyes off the road while driving eight or ninety miles an hour. It's just a gadget but I think I'll have it patented.' / But the Miss America [ship], were there not a lot of gadgets on her? Didn't gadgets play a large part in the final perfection attained in the assembly of four motors having a total of 6,400 horsepower? / 'Not on your life,' Gar replied emphatically. 'The Miss America X is the result of long research, of many painstaking laboratory experiments and of repeated practical tests. / 'I am not denying that there are gadgets here and there that fulfil [sic] their purposes, I would even call the self-bailers on the boat a 'gadget idea'--but the principal reasons for Miss America X's success lie in the gear-box assembly and the boat's variable step.\" On the next boat Wood is developing: \"'But before we race it we'll have to do a lot of work on blueprints, hold a whole lot of laboratory tests and do plenty of practical experimenting. The new one won't be a gadget, or a collection of them, any more than is the Miss America X.",
"author": "",
"title": "The Gadget King of America",
"source": " Popular Mechanics. Oct 1934. p. 536-9",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1922,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "",
"author": "Le Queux, William",
"title": "Tracked By Wireless: Which Recounts Some of the Exciting Adventures of Geoffrey Falconer, Radio Experimenter",
"source": "London: Stanley Paul & Co. p. 174",
"notes": "FIND THIS. Working on a device that will automatically pick up a particular telegraphic signal and transcribe it on a roll of paper. ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1929,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "In addition to the 5,400 stars down to the 6.2 magnitude the planetarium projects the Milky Way. This is projected separately from little gadgets on the side of the apparatus.",
"author": "Ingalls, Albert G.",
"title": "Canned Astronomy: What the New Planetariums for Chicago and Philadelphia Will Be Like",
"source": "Scientific American 141, (September 1929). p. 201-204 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1934,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Only about a decade ago, we had an infant industry, manufacturing radio sets, which was facing a problem unprecedented in business history. For in order to sell its product and thrive, it had to produce something else which that product could pluck out of the air. This was the beginning of broadcasting. / A gadget which boys of all ages had put together in the attic, came down into the living-room. Promptly technical discoveries began revolutionizing the gadget itself; and a growing and vociferous demand for good programs created a second bewildering problem.",
"author": "Reeves, Earl.",
"title": "Radio--The American Way",
"source": "The Rotarian. May 1934",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1939,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Yet in all our wide reading about the unfortunate incident, we recall not one hint of certain broader implications. Too much was said of war psychosis and nothing of the normal human equation. We had thought that the Brooklyn Bridge would find no \"buyers\" now, yet the confidence men who periodically \"sold\" that structure in the old days had a harder job than the broadcasters of H. G Wells' drama, for the latter explained over and over what they were doing. It begins to look as though there must be something inherent in the radio, in the mystery of a voice coming from an unseen speaker through a gadget of wires and tubes, that inspires unquestioning confidence. Otherwise, despite the war psychosis explanation, why did not more people question this particular broadcast as did one man we know who did not hear the original announcement?",
"author": "",
"title": "Our Point of View",
"source": " Scientific American 160, 9-9 (January 1939)",
"notes": " On H.G. Wells's \"radio terror.\" ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1940,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "",
"author": "",
"title": "Home Movie Gadgets",
"source": " Ver Halen Publications. 1940. 91pp.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1942,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "",
"author": "Stratton, Gladys E",
"title": "Your Electrical Gadgets",
"source": " Connecticut University. College of Agriculture Extension Service. 1942. 23pp.",
"notes": "FIND THIS",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1942,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": " \"Getting Acquainted With Electricity. By Alfred Morgan. \" Aimed at the average man who frequently finds himself slightly bewildered by the innumerable electric gadgets in his home, in his automobile, and in his place of business the text of this book is phrased in laymen's language that makes painless reading",
"author": "",
"title": "Our Book Corner",
"source": "Scientific American 167, (August 1942). p. 90-92",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1943,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "A pang of regret touched many hearts when the news of the death of Dr Thorndyke, the famous forensic medico, was published a few weeks ago. (I mean of course the death of Austin Freeman; in first-rate detective fiction, the creator is annihilated by his creation.) It was not easy to become intimate with Thorndyke. He was a robot of induction--always strong against romantic investigation. He distrusted intuition. His technical knowledge was so wide and so minute that on occasion he became a bit of a bore with it. Yet he never showed off about it. He used to quietly say: 'We may as well.' and then do things, incomprehensible to the layman, with dusting powders, refined chemicals and portable gadgets, which were carried by his assistant, Polton, in what must have been a compressible box--one of those cases you can squash when they begin to bulge. Had Thorndyke no close friend? He had one. What was the friend's name? I know, because I have just looked it up. It was Jarvis. I had forgotten it. Jarvis was nobody. Austin Freeman disdained character-creation.",
"author": "Jennings, Richard",
"title": "Fair Comment: Detectives: (1) Thorndyke",
"source": " The Nineteenth Century and After. vol. 134, December 1943. p. 254. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1948,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Quite literally, the chassis is the foundation of any electronic gadget. It's the place where you hang all the parts. You can bend it up out of tomato cans, cut it from a breadboard, or use the orthodox kind that you buy in radio stores.",
"author": "",
"title": "Radio-Building Hints for the Beginners",
"source": "Popular Science, November 1948",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1952,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "retro",
"quote": "Late in the 18th century Charles Stanhope, third Earl, a British statesman and inventor, built the first true logic machine, the Stanhope Demonstrator. The Demonstrator was a crude gadget for solving syllogisms. A syllogism consists of a major premise and a minor premise, the first making a statement about a \"predicate term\" and a \"middle term,\" the second about the same middle term and a \"subject term.\" By eliminating the middle term one arrives at the correct conclusion as to the relation of subject to predicate. In Stanhope's Demonstrator the middle term was represented by a small wooden panel called the \"holon.\" It had a frame through which other panels could be slid to cover all or part of the holon. A panel of gray wood, representing the subject, was pushed in from the left, and one of red glass, representing the predicate, was pushed in over this from the right.",
"author": "Gardner, Martin",
"title": "Logic Machines",
"source": "Scientific American 186, (March 1952). p. 68-73",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1952,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The waveguide is only one of many gadgets that microwaves have brought to radio. There are the cavity resonator (which is used to produce high electric fields, to filter signals, to provide circuits in vacuum tubes, and so on), the magnetron and the klystron (used to produce bursts of high power, notably as pulses for radar), and a host of others. But the story of most of them has frequently been told, and this is not the place for a detailed catalogue of microwave equipment.",
"author": "Pierce, J. R.",
"title": "Microwaves",
"source": "Scientific American 187, (August 1952). p. 43-51",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1952,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The early extracurricular interests of these men were varied, but here, too, there are some general patterns. More of the physicists than of the other groups showed early interests directly related to their later occupations, but this seems quite clearly to be due to the common small-boy preoccupation in this country with physical gadgets--radio, Meccano sets and so on. The theoretical physicists were omnivorous readers, the experimentalists much less so. […] From fiddling with gadgets to becoming a physicist may be no great leap, but the attractions of theoretical physics are not so obvious or well known, nor are those of the social sciences or advanced biology.",
"author": "Roe, Anne",
"title": "A Psychologist Examines 64 Eminent Scientists",
"source": "Scientific American 187, (November 1952). p. 21-25",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1953,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Lie Gadgets: The technological methods of lie detection appear to be losing favor among the experts. The Atomic Energy Commission has just issued a new policy directive on the use of the lie detector at Oak Ridge. It will no longer be used for periodic mass examinations of the several thousand employees assigned there to 'sensitive' jobs. Future lie detector examinations anywhere in the AEC will be confined to specific cases and will be undertaken on a 'voluntary' basis and only when authorized by the general manager.\" ",
"author": "",
"title": "Science and the Citizen",
"source": "Scientific American 188, (June 1953). p.44-54",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1954,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "nautical;trivial",
"quote": "The men have been crowded nearly off the ship by electronic gadgets. Radar sets and automatic control devices take up so much room that the crew must sling its hammocks in odd corners and queue up for an hour to get a meal. Water is rationed because machines have replaced some of the storage tanks. So the sailors begin to extract a vacuum tube here, drop a quiet monkey wrench there. The press, as over-hasty in taking reassurance as it had been in taking alarm, was naively relieved to learn that the trouble was not foreign sabotage but just a revolt of the crew.",
"author": "",
"title": "Non-Mechanical Brains Revolt",
"source": "Scientific American 190, (June 1954). p. 44-52",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1954,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Among other discoveries, it was found possible to make the brain stimulate itself by positive feedback. The electric impulses from the brain were connected through the recording machine to the electronic gadget that produced the flashes of light. In this way a brain re­sponse to a flash triggered a new flash and so on. This method of self-excite­ment is particularly effective for reveal­ing a hidden tendency to epileptic seizures. It resembles very closely the way an engineer may test the stability of a transmission system: he applies posi­tive feedback to disturb the system and observes how effectively the system's in­herent negative feedback operates to damp the disturbance and restore equi­librium.",
"author": "Walter, W. Grey",
"title": "The Electrical Activity of the Brain",
"source": "Scientific American 190, (June 1954). p. 54-63",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1954,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "matic",
"quote": "Claude E. Shannon, Hagelbarger's colleague at Bell Labs, built a second penny matcher along the same lines, but using a different criterion for deciding when the opponent's play pattern justifies a departure from random choices. In an article in the Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, Shannon describes how the designers tried to figure out mathematically which machine could beat the other. They finally had to give up and leave the experiment. They built a third machine to act as umpire and go-between, plugged all three together and let them run, 'to the accompaniment of small side bets and loud cheering.' Although he does not specify the owner of the winning gadget, Shannon reports that the 'more precipitate of the who consistently beat the larger, more deliberate one in a ratio of about 55 to 45.",
"author": "",
"title": "Automatic Gambler",
"source": " Scientific American 191, (July 1954). p. 42-48",
"notes": " On a device that guesses heads or tails better than humans, because a truly random set of guesses statistically wins more often. Humans can't make perfectly random guesses. ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1957,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "lit",
"quote": "One night, about two in the morning, the door of our shack was thrown open with a bang and, before I knew what was happening, I felt a hand gripping my throat, squeezing it viciously. I knew damned well I wasn't dreaming. Then a voice, a boozy voice which I recognized instantly, and which sounded maudlin and terrifying, shouted in my ear: 'Where's that damned gadget?' / 'What gadget?' I gurgled, struggling to release the grip around my throat. / 'The radio! Where are you hiding it?",
"author": "Miller, Henry",
"title": "Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch",
"source": "p. 73",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "title or source"
},
{
"year": 1958,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The process of technical development and the impact of a Wester scale of values in which the mere quality of novelty in itself has a high place, provide new objects of ambition; electric fans, refrigerators and washing machines, vacuum cleaners and gramophones. The new gadgets may be highly valued in themselves for the increased comfort or convenience which they bring, or for their effect in reducing household drudgery and saving time.",
"author": "Dore, Ronald Philip",
"title": "City Life in Japan: A Study of a Tokyo Ward. 1958.",
"source": "",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1959,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "american",
"quote": "a leather-covered, transistor-packed shoebox that does tricks with mirrors (honest!) to make a respectably sized picture even in seashore sunshine. / The Safari portable weights 15 pounds, measures about 8 1/2 by 16 1/2 by 5 1/2 inches. The picture area is 80 square inches--same as an ordinary 14-inch screen. It runs on batteries (which can be recharged at home) or on house current. The price is not outrageous for such a seductive adult toy: $255\" (65). \"Americans like to move around. And they insist on taking their entertainment with them--the magazine rolled into a pocket, the portable radio held at ear level\" (65-6). \"But the manufacturer's motive for gambling a million or so on such a new product can be considerably more complex. He may hope that (a) people will buy the gadget because it is a Practical and Useful Convenicence; pr (b) people may not need the gadget but will buy anyway because it is The Thing to Do, like dancing the cha-cha-cha; or © people will come into the store to see the Amazing New Invention and end up buying something else he wants to sell, as they look at convertibles and buy sedans\" (65). Other manufacturers working on their own models, including the Japanese. * * * \"Two printed-circuit boards clearly marked--like a road map--simplify trouble shooting. They form two sides of the chassis, with the picture tube and battery filling up most of the space in between. It makes a neat, compact and efficient assembly that pays off in convenience and performance",
"author": "Mann, Martin",
"title": "First Really Portable TV",
"source": "Popular Science. Aug. 1959. p. 64",
"notes": "cover story. The Philco Safari,",
"requires_revision": "multiple quotes"
},
{
"year": 1959,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "standard",
"quote": "New jobs for flashlight cells include everything from polishing shoes to playing records. Coming soon--truly portable TV sets.\" \"A lot has happened since the days when flashlight batteries were used for flashlights. Today's big boom in battery power has been made possible by an amazing new assortment of pint-sized power plants, all of which look like flashlight batteries but do remarkably different jobs. / Today, you can shave by battery, listen to records by battery, mix cocktails by battery. You can power radios, movie cameras, dictating machines, Geiger counters, fire and burglar alarms, tape recorders, clocks, kitchen food mixers--all without plugging in an electric cord. / In the wonderful world of the future are such bright promises as battery-run power tools, truly portable TV sets and a variety of cordless home appliances.",
"author": " McEntee, Howard G.",
"title": "Clever New Gadgets Run on Flashlight Batteries",
"source": "Popular Science. March 1959. p. 130",
"notes": "One of the first usages of \"gadget\" to refer to a small, portable, hand-held electronic device. Modularity makes the batteries themselves seem like the gadget here… What's important is that the cells we're familiar with today used to be called exclusively \"flashlight batteries.\" As an Eveready ad jokes, \"We even make flashlight batteries for flashlights.\" \"Luckily for the buyer, battery makers and the National Bureau of Standards have cooperated in establishing five basic sizes of flashlight cells. 'D' cells are the large, familiar 'standard' size--about 1 1/4\" in diameter and 2 1/4\" tall.…",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1961,
"decade": 1960,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Also, who is to judge at the outset whether a gadget invention is not worthy of a patent? The telephone, telegraph, movie, radio and television were regarded as mere 'gadgets' in their early stages. In fact, nearly all basic inventions must necessarily go through the 'gadget' stage. The Patent Office policy of resolving doubts in favor of the inventor is thus sound. It encourages investment which promotes industrial progress.",
"author": "Rossman, Michael",
"title": "",
"source": "ed. William B. Ball. Journal of the Patent Office Society. v. 43. 1961. p. 799.",
"notes": "Review of Dynamics of the Patent System",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1966,
"decade": 1960,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Apartment hunters have been known to carry portable radios with them so that they can test the noise transfer from one apartment to the next. Some owners of cooperative apartments are compelled to spend large sums to insulate their dwellings more satisfactorily against the noise of their neighbors. […] In Europe long experience in apartment living and a popular taste for gracious living (in preference to gadgets) have led to careful attention to noise control in the construction of multiple-family dwellings. Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and the U.S.S.R. have well-developed acoustical building codes that have been applied to the large-scale program of rebuilding of housing since World War II.",
"author": "Beranek, Leo L.",
"title": "Noise",
"source": "Scientific American 215, (December 1966). p. 66-76 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1970,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "lit;love",
"quote": "Early the next morning he bought a small TV set from a tiny Japanese man who said it was a new model and was very proud of it. Towns couldn't get over how sharp and clear the picture was. He was not very mechanical, but he loved tiny, intricately made gadgets and had a vision of filling up a warm, comfortable apartment with them, living in it and spending most of his time turning them on and off. He felt a sudden burst of love for the tiny Japanese man who was practically a transistor himself and wanted to bend over and give him a hug. The fellow was very tiny and Towns wondered what would happen if he caught a disease that made you lose weight. He would probably just get a little smaller and stay all right.",
"author": "Friedman, Bruce Jay",
"title": "Just Back from the Coast",
"source": "Harpers. March 1970. pp. 68-72. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1970,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "lit;love",
"quote": "[…] the feeling that no little TV set could survive a shot like that so he took it out of the box, attached the battery pack and switched it on in the terminal. Some sputtering pictures showed up. \" See that, \" said the porter, \" she coming in good. \" It came as no great surprise to Towns when the pictures bleeped out and turned to darkness. There was a package of warranties in the box, but Towns had no heart to get started with them. Besides, he had the feeling that once a mechanical gadget was injured, it went downhill no matter what you did to it. He gave the porter a look and then tossed the set lightly into a trash container. Someone in the terminal said the astronauts were going to be down in forty-five minutes. There wasn't any time to fool around now.",
"author": "Friedman, Bruce Jay",
"title": "Just Back from the Coast",
"source": "Harpers. March 1970. pp. 68-72.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1970,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Lately there is a new symbol of status. Free of charge, Washington's C &; P Telephone Co. has installed ten of its still experimental \" picturephones \" in the offices of the highest presidential advisers. The gadgets, small TV sets attached to the telephone, allow the presidential elite to dial-in one another's images as well as voices-not that any one of them is likely to forget what the others look like. Apart from broadcasting status, the picturephones contribute little to the smoother workings of Government. To Egghead Kissinger, they are a technological mystery. He will not call on the device, but does take calls, with a bit of fuming and fussing as he tries to work the thing.",
"author": "",
"title": "Broadcasting Status",
"source": "Time. 14 December 1970. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1971,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "lit",
"quote": "Shortly fate noon––after a nearby siren yelped for a few seconds to remind one, if he had forgotten, of the perilous state of the world––Willie kicked on Lesser's door with the heel of his shoe, holding in both arms, in fact weighed down by it, his massive typewriter. Lesser, for a surprised second, couldn't imagine why he had come, was startled by the sight of him. Willie wore a blue-and-purple sack-like woolen African tunic over his overalls. His hair wasn't Afro-styled, as Lesser had thought, but combed straight as though against the grain, with a part on the left side, and raised in back like a floor plank that had sprung up. The stringy goatee flowering under his chin lengthened his face and seemed to emphasize the protrusive quality of his eyes, more white than brown. Standing, he was about five ten, taller than Lesser had imagined. \" Could I park this gadget here till the morning? I would hate to have it stolen out of my office. I been hiding it in the closet but that ain't hiding, if you dig. \" Lesser, after hesitation, dug. \" Are you through for the day? \" \" What's it to you? \" \" Nothing, I only thought? \" \" I go on from eight to twelve or thereabouts, \" said the black, \" full four hours' work and then goof off?",
"author": "Malamud, Bernard",
"title": "The Tenants",
"source": "Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. 1971.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1971,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "computer",
"quote": "You'd want it to be able to telephone the police automatically. But I've decided, for now, not to get involved in the financial and legal transactions I'd have to have with the phone company before I'd he allowed to connect the computer to the phone and have it place calls or answer the phone when was away and dialled it to get a status report on the house. '' Mr. Prugh is quick to admit that a number of relatively inexpensive gadgets -- a clock, a calculator, a player piano, a text-editing typewriter,a burglar-alarm system, and so on -- can, separately, perform many of the tasks his computer has learned, and also that his computer is \" not what we at the Defense Department call cost-effective. \" However, he admires the computer's versatility (\" No clock can cope with my income taxes \"), and he believes that a home computer will be economically feasible in the not very distant future.",
"author": "Trow, George",
"title": "Talk of the Town",
"source": "New Yorker. 16 January 1971. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1973,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "I've taken a great many pains, Mr. Crainpool -- and gone to considerable expense, too, I might add -- to reinforce your clerk's ambience, to clericalize you. Yet you persist in your taste for the newfangled. I suppose you've been thinking in terms of electric typewriters and Xerox machines. What's next, sir, conference telephones, gadgets that take your calls? Mr. Crainpool is unavailable right now. Your message will be recordedand played back for him when he returns. Please begin speaking when you hear the electronic bleep... Bleep.' \" \" No, sir. \" \" No, sir.' You're damned right, sir, no sir. And what happens to the thick ledgers with the careful rulings inked down the center of the page? The big gray and black cardboard boxes with their snaps and clasps and […]",
"author": "Elkin, Stanley",
"title": "Searches and Seizures",
"source": "Random House. 1973",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1975,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "computer",
"quote": "Evolutionary successor of the minicomputer, the microcomputer is a set of microelectronic \"chips\" serving the various computer functions. It has opened up new realms of computer applications. […] In the 1980s microcomputers will be commonplace in the home in consumer electronic products, appliances, security devices and innumerable gadgets and toys.",
"author": "Vacroux, André G.",
"title": "Microcomputers",
"source": "Scientific American 232, (May 1975). p. 32-40 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1976,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "computer",
"quote": "Fun and serious business with the small electronic calculator. […] If you could climb into a time machine and go back to ancient Athens for a visit with Aristotle, what could you carry in your pocket that would most aston­ish him? I suggest it would be a pocket calculator. Its Arabic number system, its light-emitting diodes, its miniaturized cir­cuitry isomorphic with Boolean logic (Aris­totle, remember, invented formal logic) and above all its computational speed and power would intrigue him more than any other small object I can think of. / The revolutionary consequences of these miraculous little gadgets are only beginning to be manifest. Among engineers and scientists the slide rule has already become al­most as obsolete as the abacus. It is sad to think of the mathematicians of recent cen­turies who devoted years to the arduous calculation of logarithms and trigonometric functions. Today an engineer finds it takes less time to calculate such numbers all over again on a pocket machine than to look them up in a book or make a slide-rule approximation.",
"author": "Gardner, Martin",
"title": "Mathematic Games",
"source": " Scientific American 235, (July 1976). p. 126-131",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 2009,
"decade": 2000,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "As 2009 winds down and we try to come up with new and clever ways of referring to the early years of this century, there's really only one thing left to do: declare our ten favorite gadgets of the aughts and show them off in chronological order. It's arguable that if this wasn't the decade of gadgets, it was certainly a decade shaped by gadgets -- one which saw the birth of a new kind of connectedness. In just ten years time, gadgets have touched almost every aspect of our daily lives, and personal technology has come into its own in a way never before seen. It's a decade that's been marked the ubiquity of the internet, the downfall of the desktop, and the series finale of Friends, but we've boiled it down to the ten devices we've loved the most and worked the hardest over the past ten years. We even had some of our friends in the tech community chime in with their picks on what they thought was the gadget or tech of the decade -- so join us for a look back at the best (gadget) years ever!",
"author": "",
"title": "Ten Gadgets That Defined the Decade",
"source": " Endgadget. 30 December 2009. http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/30/ten-gadgets-that-defined-the-decade/ ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 2011,
"decade": 2010,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "It seems like ages since Amazon introduced us to the $199 Fire at a hectic New York City event, but in truth that was only about six weeks ago. Maybe our perception of time is warped because we've been hearing talk about this 7-inch Android tablet for months now. Maybe it's because Amazon launching a tablet seemed like such a natural thing to do after Barnes & Noble paved the way with its Nook Color. Or, maybe it's just because the gadget Amazon shipped looks nigh-identical to the 7-inch BlackBerry PlayBook that we've had for, well, ages.",
"author": "Stevens, Tim",
"title": "Amazon Kindle Fire Review",
"source": "Engadget. November 14, 2011. http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/14/amazon-kindle-fire-review/ ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 2011,
"decade": 2010,
"primary": "handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "We've more or less accepted e-readers as the best way to read a book digitally, but there's still a whole lot that gadgets can do that e-readers suck at—literally anything you own with a screen is better at this stuff than an e-reader. The Kindle Touch is the first to really bridge that gap in a way that makes sense.\" A particular kind of electronic device -- cellphone or tablet, as opposed to e-reader.",
"author": "Wagner, Kylie",
"title": "Kindle Touch Lightning Review: The Only Book Gadget You Need",
"source": "Gizmodo. 14 November 2011",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1951,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "handy;cog",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "We are told that the audiometer in the ad is 'installed in a radio receiver i na scientifically selected radio home. By recording every twist of the dial, every minute of the day or night, the audiometer obtains precious radio data not available through any other means.' These meters are, of course, isntalled wit theconsent of the scientifically selected radio-owner.\" \"Don't look now, but I hear somebody hooking this gadget to an electronic brain--for the good of mankind, of course.",
"author": "McLuhan, Marshall",
"title": "Chapter \"Market Research\"",
"source": "The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. New York: The Vanguard Press, Inc. p. 48",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1949,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "handy;rig",
"secondary": "list",
"quote": "His construction accomplishments since then read like the listing of equipment for a Buck Rodgers laboratory. Walk into his private sanctum and you'll spy weird, impressive-looking gadgets. Among other things, he has built a photo voltaic electric eye, a large solenoid, monometric flame, code recorder, stroboscope, cathode ray oscilloscope, a two-inch refracting telescope, a Tesla coil, and many motors. … His skill and imagination devised such things as his cathode ray oscilloscope, an intricate gadget ordinarily found only in the laboratories of professional scientists and engineers. … When Nick began to show interest in the workings of mechanical gadgets by taking them apart, then miraculously putting them together without having a piece or two left over, the neighborhood friends and relatives began to help out. Nick was delighted, although his mother probably had some mental reservations when these friends began to unload worn-out gadgets, machinery, mechanical relics, and the dusty burden of attics, cellars and garages. The creative ability of Nick turned most of this 'junk' into something useful to himself.",
"author": "Pashko, Stanley",
"title": "Good at Everything!",
"source": "Boys' Life. July 1949. p. 8.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1970,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "instrument",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "An oscillator is an essential element of apparatus as diverse as pendulum clocks, jackhammers, radios, lasers, hy­draulic rams and electronic heart pace­makers. For every kind of oscillator that has been put to work at least a dozen other kinds repose on laboratory shelves as interesting but useless gadgets. Three new examples of such gadgetry recently came to the attention of this department. The first of the three, which is known as a salt oscillator, is the creation of Seelye Martin of the University of Washington.",
"author": "Strong, C.L.",
"title": "The Amateur Scientist",
"source": "Scientific American 223, (September 1970). p. 221-234",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1971,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "instrument",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "This brings me to the crux of my argument. Throughout the phase of history which we have come to survey, till very recently, to be a scientist was a calling, not a job. Scientists were men of science, not just men in science. They had come to science driven by an inner urge, curiosity, a quest for knowledge, and they knew, or learned, what it was all about. They were not drawn or lured into science in masses by fascinating gadgets, public acclaim, manpower needs of industries and governments, or job security; nor did they just drift in for no good reason. The scene, however, is now changing rapidly. The popularity and needs of an expanding science bring in more drifters and followers than pioneers. […] What were their guides; Ideas, not gadgets, not the need to publish. Ideas, in turn, sprout from the fertile soil of experience.",
"author": "Weiss, Paul A.",
"title": "Within the Gates of Science and Beyond",
"source": "Hafner Publishing Company. 1971. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1971,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "instrument",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "... many people today flee from the realities of power into psychological interpretations of social behavior in order to avoid the challenge of contemporary political faiths or to restore a wished-for malleability to politics by reliance on a new analytical gadget. Nevertheless, it should be equally obvious that a political realism that ignores the dimensions of character, that ignores how people interpret power configurations on the basis of their psychic needs, will only be useful in short-run interpretations and not always even there, \" The Lonely Crowd, p. 179",
"author": "Birnbaum, Norman",
"title": "Toward a Critical Sociology",
"source": "New York: Oxford University Press. 1971",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1971,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "instrument",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "During my latest visit to Madison, I found Connie busily taking notes in a room containing two cages not side by side, but connected here and there with wires and tubes. Each held a baby monkey and a number of tiny, mysterious gadgets? handles, buttons, and boxes of differing dimensions. \" I'm testing their learning ability and reactions, \" she explained. \" This one on my right can turn on a picture show whenever he likes? colored slides, you know, one after another, on that little screen thing. When he gets tired of watching those, he can get himself a drink of water by pulling the string here. He can make this toy slide up and down, and open that inner door or […]",
"author": "Hahn, Emily",
"title": "On the Side of the Apes",
"source": "New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company. 1971.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1978,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "instrument",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "To teach arithmetic Peirce recom­mended the constant use of counters such as beans, the early introduction of binary notation, the use of 101 cards numbered 0 through 100 and other de­vices now common in grade school in­struction. In one textbook he wanted to insert a cardboard mechanical gadget for doing multiplication. \"The objection to inserting this,\" he jotted in a note­book, \"would be that the teachers would not understand the mathematical prin­ciple on which it depends, and might therefore be exposed to embarrassing questions.\"",
"author": "Gardner, Martin",
"title": "Mathematical Games: On Charles Sanders Peirce, Philosopher and Gamesman",
"source": "Scientific American 239, (July 1978). p. 18-26",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1944,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "language",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The New Deal, intervening at a moment of national economic collapse, improvised a number of gadgets, and some of them — as was to be expected – worked badly or not at all. Some of these gadgets also raised cries of horror on the grounds that they were 'socialistic.' The Tennessee Valley Autority was one of these innovations which a great many citizens denounced as being un-American, an affront to free enterprise…",
"author": "Stowe, Leland",
"title": "They Shall Not Sleep",
"source": "Knopf. 1944. p.391",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1946,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "language",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The scientists began some years ago to discover the real nature of unreadability. Dr. Flesch is here trying something that goes beyond diagnostic studies and is probably more difficult. He is offering sound and practical 'rules' for producing the readable kind of writing, stepping out of the role of scientist and becoming a teacher and giving a good example of the skill he is trying to teach\" (x). Time magazine calls Flesch (as quoted on dustjacket) \"Mr. Fix-It of writing.\" Language gadgets used to distinguish concrete words (\"apple\") from abstract ones (\"democracy\")? * * * \"For language consists of two parts: the things we say and the machinery by which we say them. To express our thoughts, as we have seen, we use sentences; and we cannot express a thought by any single word unless it is able to do the work of a sentence if necessary. So we can tell the meaningful words apart from the mere language machinery by the sentence test: if a word can form a sentence, it refers to something outside language; if it cannot, it is just a language gadget. This has nothing to do with abstractness and concreteness: it is a linguistic difference. For instance, the abstract word sin can be sued as a sentence, as in the famous answer to the question 'What was the sermon about?' But the next question, 'What did the preacher say?' had to be answered by a whole sentence: 'He was against it.' 'Against' by itself wouldn't do as an answer; neither would dis- for 'He disapproved of it.' That's because against and dis- are examples of language gadgets; they have no meaning except combined with meaningful words in a sentence. / Now, the point of all this is that difficult, complex, abstract language is cluttered up with gadgets. If we stick to this purely linguistic test, we can measure difficulty by counting gadgets, and we can simplify out speech and writing by throwing them out. / Language gadgets, as you have seen, are of two kinds: words by themselves, like against, and parts of words (Affixes), like dis-. The more harmful of the two for plain talk are the affixes, since the reader or hearer cannot understand what the gadget does to the sentence before he has disentangled it from the word it is attached to. Each affix burdens his mind with two jobs: first, he has to split up the word into tis parts and, second, he has to rebuild the sentence from these parts. To do this does not even take a split second, of course; but it adds up\"",
"author": "Flesch, Rudolf Franz",
"title": "Gadgets of Language",
"source": "The Art of Plain Talk. Harper & Brother: 1946.",
"notes": " Foreword by Lyman Bryson, educational director of CBS. The book apparently builds on \"scientific studies in the psychology of verbal communication\" which have \"made advances in finding out what readers get, and what they do not get, out of looking at black marks on a white page\" (ix). In Bryson's introduction, he shudders at the thought of the millions who don't read \"And yet these people, millions of them, vote and run machinery and handle the dangerous gadgets of a civilization of which they understand very little\" (ix). * * * Gadgets of language can make one more critically and culturally aware of the more dangerous industrial gadgets one uses every day. Intro to Flesch's next book written by Alan J. Gould, Executive Editor of The Associated Press. \"The rapidity with which Doctor Flesch has achieved results on the American writing scene is due, I suggest, to two main factors: (a) his own skill in presenting a novel formula for measuring Readability, and (b) the extent to which it has been applied effectively to news writing. A Flesch axiom--'Write as you talk'--is now widely accepted by newspapermen who scoffed at the doctor's ideas when they began emerging from collegiate classrooms\" (x). Flesch as a language and writing guru, who has a run in with another media guru, McLuhan. McLuhan cites it in The Mechanical Bride? \"The Art of Plain Talk is not a grammar nor a volume of 'usage.' It is not a rehash of vague generalities…\" around p. 41-42 in McLuhan. Flesch follows this up with The Art of Readable Writing, in 1949(?), stating goal of his early book was \"to popularize the concept of readability.\" ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1955,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "language",
"secondary": "cybernetics;patent",
"quote": "I do have some familiarity with modern high speed computing devices and other optical-electronic-mechanical techniques for handling information; and I have had some contacts with--and surely a lively interest in--the recent developments of communication theory\" (613). The \"patent office problem\" is, to Weaver, \"a fascinating instance of a rather common modern dilemma, namely, the essential collapse of a communication network due to over-complication; or somewhat more precisely, due to the use of an outmoded procedure which is not capable of coping with the presently existing degree of complication. This is, in fact, a dramatic instance of the situation not uncommon in the general world of scholarship, in which a vast and intricate tangle of documents gets jammed into an unusable pile between two minds\" (613). \"There are slightly less than three million U.S. Patents. If we add the foreign patents and the items of technical literature available in the Patent Office, the total swells to about seven million. The corresponding figure was only 1.2 million in 1900; and the patents of today average about one-third longer, and are certainly much more complex in their technical and scientific detail. In the terminology of modern communications theory, in which a 'bit' of information is the basic unit (essentially the answer to a single 'Yes-No' question), the total amount of information which must today be dealt with in the Patent office has been estimated to be of the order of fifty billion bits [CONVERT 50 BILLION BITS TO GB? 1 million GB? = 1,000 TB?] (614). Goes on to survey different kinds of \"mechanical aids to data handling.\" / A question of classification -- beginning to work out the dimensions of a relational database: \"When does a Document A exhibit inhibitory relevance to another Document B?\" (619). * * * Is it unreasonable to think that, if one just looks deep enough with trained and observant eyes, he might see an inner logical simplicity behind all the confusing proliferation of things and ideas that turn up in the Patent Office? Just because of its emphasis on inner logical simplicity, and on generality to encompass multiplicity, the point of view of mathematics would seem to be the promising one here. How, for example, does one ever define 'containers' in the everyday nouns and adjectives of commerce in a way which is at once simple enough, general enough, and critical enough so that can possibly cope with the gadgets someone will think of tomorrow? But what object can anyone ever think up that will not be subject to the basic inner concepts of connectivity as they are developed in topology?\" (621-2) Biological metaphor for an \"organic sort\" of classification system, \"For it must be able to grow and to adjust itself to an ever changing environment.\" (622). \"I realize that I have succeeded in defining, in impersonal terms, Professor John von Neumann; and I also realize that the Atomic Energy Commission has him all booked up at the moment. But at least he proves that such leadership is not unthinkable.\" (623)",
"author": "Weaver, Warren",
"title": "The Patent Office Problem",
"source": "ournal of the Patent Office Society. v. 37. 1955. p. 613.",
"notes": "Given as a luncheon speech April 15, 1955 at a NYC joint meeting of the American Patent Law Association and New York Patent Law Association. ",
"requires_revision": "multiple quotes"
},
{
"year": 1949,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "language;cog",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The mildest form of corrupt propaganda is a process of persuasive part-truths. […] The machinery of propaganda is made of standardized gadgets by which you can detect it. One of these standard gadgets is slogans. The freeze the real process of thought. […] One of these gadgets is to create fear by describing the horrors of invasion of the United States by foreign armies. This one always arises to its maximum decibel when pressuring legislation and elections. While aircraft can come our way no armies on earth can land on our shores. Another gadget is to give new meaning to old, simple, and well-understood expressions until the integrity of our language is polluted. The term 'liberalism' has turned pink inside. The term 'welfare' never breofre meant the 'welfare state' with its red or pink colors. […] You can test malignant propaganda from another of its gadgets. That is the smear. This gadget has wide potency.\" (114-15). \"Debate founded on the full disclosure of the whole truth and free of these gadgets is the stuff that can save free men.\" \"it was the engineer with his household gadgets. Sometimes the engineer will be needed to put truth into propaganda. But I am getting off the track of amiability.\" (185) ",
"author": "Hoover, Herbert",
"title": "Concerning Honor In Public Life: Nation-wide Broadcast Address at the Iowa Centennial Celebration, Des Moines, Iowa [August 30, 1951]",
"source": " Addresses Upon the American Road, 1945-1948. D. Van Nostrand Co. 1949",
"notes": "On the growth of intellectual dishonesty and propaganda in American public life. Hoover uses \"gadget\" metaphorically accessing a much older sense of the term as an individual cog within a mechanism, but the metaphorical meaning is as a tool of rhetoric.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1958,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "language;instrument",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "This article by Walter C. Michaels in your April issue will delight the hearts of many physics teachers who in the past quarter-century have been caught between the muddleheaded educationists, with their emphasis on adjustment, and the functional boys who saw in high school physics nothing more than a parade of gadgets. […] The sad part of Dr. Michels's article is his implication that our economy cannot afford enough qualified physics teachers to maintain an adequate classroom program, and therefore must resort to money-saving gadgets such as canned and televised lectures.",
"author": "",
"title": "Letters",
"source": "Scientific American 199, (July 1958). p. 8-13 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1899,
"decade": 1890,
"primary": "lever",
"secondary": "nautical",
"quote": "…for on taking the wheel I found a machine under my hands such as I never even heard of before. The wheel was fixed upon the tiller in such a manner that the whole concern travelled backwards and forwards across the deck in the maddest kind of way. […] I fairly shook with apprehension lest the mate should come and look in the compass. I had been accustomed to hard words if I did not steer within half a point each way; but here was a 'gadget' that worked me to death, the result a wake like the letter S. Gradually I got the hang of the thing, becoming easier in my mind on my own account. Even that was not an unmixed blessing, for I had now some leisure to listen to the goings-on around the deck.",
"author": "Bullen, Frank T.",
"title": "The Cruise of the Cachalot: Round the World After Sperm Whales",
"source": "New York: D. Appleton and Company. 7-8",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1918,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "lever",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "He makes change a dozen times, answers questions with a smile, hollers 'Step up in the aisle;' pulls a lever here and there regulating brakes and air. When he is prepared to go, shuts the bird-cage with his toe, moves a gadget with his knee--regulates the speed, you see--pulls the bell cord with his teeth, lest some folks get caught beneath. That would throw 'er off the track; maybe flop 'er on 'er back. Calls out names of every street, punches transfers with his feet. Thus he earns his daily pay, running cars out Summit Way.",
"author": "",
"title": "Tinkle, Tinkle, Little Car': Seattle Poet Celebrates the Safety Car in Flowing and Humorous Verse",
"source": "American Electric Railway Association. vol. 7. November, 1918.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1922,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "lever",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Somehow or other I can't get on to this radio a little bit. When you get that sending outfit rigged you'll have to go down and test it. I'd probably bungle something. I didn't even dare meddle with this gadget for tuning. I tried it once and when your voice stopped I just shoved her back and let it go at that.",
"author": "Verrill, A. Hyatt ",
"title": "The Radio Detectives",
"source": "D. Appleton and Company: 1922",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1935,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "lever",
"secondary": "design;ad",
"quote": "It's new and different … slick and rounded to drop into the side pocket or purse … not a protruding gadget on its entire surface. It is almost indestructible - moulded of metal-core Bakelite in permanent grained brown color.",
"author": "",
"title": "The Armour Plated Ebner",
"source": "Scientific American 152, (April 1935) p. 219",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1936,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "lever",
"secondary": "ad;design",
"quote": "PERPLEX is the ideal Tank for the Home Laboratory. It is versatile, accommodating 5 different film sizes. Made entirely of Bake­lite, it is non-corrosive and thus impervious to the effects of photographic chemicals. It is simple to operate, has no complicating gadgets and obviates the necessity of difficult finger manipulation. Superbly constructed and yield­ ing fine results, it is moderately priced at $8.50.",
"author": "",
"title": "Develop your films at home with Perplex",
"source": " Scientific American 154, (June 1936) p. 328-355",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1938,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "lever",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "In figure 5 the Herschel wedge is shown at the left. Near it is a three-lens Ramsden eyepiece made by Taylor and at the right is another of his gadgets, a micrometer focus control. This may be used on any telescope having a standard 1 1/4\" diameter eyepiece fitting and it moves the eyepiece assembly in or out of focus, similar to a rack and pinion.",
"author": "Ingalls, Albert G.",
"title": "Telescoptics",
"source": "Scientific American 158, (April 1938). p. 248-251",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1939,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "lever",
"secondary": "design",
"quote": "We admit that, like other camera users, we desire occasionally--and, when we can afford it, fulfill the desire--to trade in our camera for a new one, one equipped with the newer gadgets. They are hard to resist, those handsomely contrived, new camera models, not only because they are good to look at but the new gadgets are real improvements and signify advances in camera design. Nevertheless, no matter how long or short the period during which a camera is actually in our position it was a new one when we bought it and that, for us at least, is important.",
"author": "Deschlin, Jacob",
"title": "Camera Angles",
"source": "Scientific American 161, (October 1939). p. 238-243",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1940,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "lever",
"secondary": "complex",
"quote": "After all,' says the concluding sentence in the foreword to an instruction booklet for one of the Filmo cameras, 'we made the camera, so first try our way of using it.' There's a lot of common sense back of that, obvious though it may appear to be. Over-confidence and eagerness to get going with the new outfit frequently induces people of newly purchased cameras to use the camera before they have read the instructions. The consequence too often is that something jams because some little gadget was not properly adjusted, although reference to a single line in the instructions would have avoided the accident.",
"author": "",
"title": "Don't Argue With the Instruction Book",
"source": "Scientific American 162, (May 1940). p. 286-310",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1941,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "lever",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "He must sit cramped and alone in the narrow confines of his gad­get-filled quarters for hours at a time. He is often cold, having only the shelter of thin plastic or glass walls to protect him from the frigid temperatures of high altitudes. His often-tense body be­ comes numb from the bomber's vibration; particularly so if his post is in a tail turret, but he must fight off torpidity as he would enemy planes.",
"author": "Peck, James H.L.",
"title": "Heroes in Glass Houses: High-Speed Planes and Modern Armament Provide Intricate Problems for Aerial Gunners",
"source": "Scientific American 164, (January 1941). p. 12-14",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1951,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "lever",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The Boy's Book Of Model Rail Roading, by Raymond F. Yates. Harper and Brothers ($2.50). Instructions on the repair of model trains, the making of stations, switches, signals, scenery, bridges, viaducts, remote-control gadgets; how, in other words, to pursue the small-train hobby while pretending to be doing it for your children. Mr. Yates has also taken pains to lay out simple jobs the children can do so as not to disturb you.",
"author": "",
"title": "Children's Books",
"source": " Scientific American 185, (December 1951). p. 72-77",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1960,
"decade": 1960,
"primary": "lever",
"secondary": "matic",
"quote": "Wiener is a fluent writer, but this is not much of a novel. It has some merit as social criticism, it describes ingeniously the technical stuff (control gadgetry) and the patent and corporate chicaneries one can get away with in our society, but the hero is a cold fish, a sort of Armenian trader whom one never gets either to like or to understand.",
"author": "Newman, James R.",
"title": "Books [Review of Norbert Wiener, The Tempter]",
"source": "Scientific American 203, (July 1960). p. 179-194",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1961,
"decade": 1960,
"primary": "lever",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "If mitosis is not desperately discouraging as a problem of molecular biology, it is because the complex operations are embodied in a definite structural assembly––the mitotic apparatus––that can be regarded as a gadget for performing the operations. We can approach the physics and chemistry of mitosis through the study of the formation, structure and changes of the mitotic apparatus, without forgetting that mitosis is an operation of the whole cell.",
"author": "Mazia, Daniel",
"title": "How Cells Divide",
"source": "Scientific American 205, (September 1961). p. 100-121",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1972,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "lever",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "[…]others stood around carrying the beers, the whiskey, the whatnot like altarbearers but with considerably more guilt and with a stirring in their gut that you feel in a whorehouse when you're told to wait for the girl and suddenly you hear high-heel steps coming down the hall and envision the legs, the garters, the thighs, the panties, the breasts, the throat, the face, the hair of the woman coming -- This was exactly the way they felt when Johnson unhooked the storm door with that delicacy of thumb and forefinger you need for such gadgets and as though he was unfastening a brassiere from the bulge-back of the house. Wild children opened the door; there was a lot of stumbling over things on the porch floor but Cody never dreamed that one of the crazy little giggling girls who had been sent by the gals to open up while they brush up the last wave was Joanna Dawson his future wife. In America it's always two girls and one is always older and uglier than the other, except in this case it was more accurate[…]",
"author": "Kerouc, Jack",
"title": "Visions of Cody",
"source": "",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1928,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "mini",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "a miniature replica in bronze of the Egyptian Sphinx, save that it had a long, curved tail.\" hieroglyphics on the sides. \"Interesting gadget, he said.",
"author": "",
"title": "",
"source": "Boys Life, 1928",
"notes": "A small paperweight",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1932,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "mini",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The small trinkets sometimes known as 'gallantries' are a minor phase of eighteenth-century culture, but not without their significance. No material is more suitable than porcelain…",
"author": "Schmidt, Robert and William Arnold Thorpe",
"title": "Porcelain as an Art and a Mirror of Fashion. Chatper 4: Toys and Gadgets",
"source": "G.G. Harrap & Co., Ltd. 1932",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1938,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "mini",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The junk-jewelry and charm-bracelet fad proved such a gold mine for gadget manufacturers that spring finds them marketing an extraordinary new crop of decorative objects for women's wear. 'Lapel gadgets' is what they are called and the industry considers them a 'hot item.' Although the season has just begun, manufacturers report that lapel ornaments already account for 35% of their sales of 'junk.' […] Most imaginative of the lapel-gadget designers is Martha Sleeper, vivacious young stage and screen actress who plays minor rolls in Hollywood. Miss Sleeper designed the steer's skull below, obviously inspired by Georgia O'Keefe's paintings.",
"author": "",
"title": "Lapel Gadgets: Onions and Skulls, Engines and Shoes, are \"Hot Items.\"",
"source": " LIFE. Apr 4, 1938",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1939,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "mini",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "A year ago women wore onions in their coat lapels. This spring college girls wore carrots in their hair. This summer it looks as if women will wear glass umbrellas, jugs, fruit, birds and question marks in their ears. The glass earrings on this page are made by Marianna von Allesch, decorator and glass blower, and are now sold all over the country for about $2.95.",
"author": "",
"title": "Glass Gadgets Turn Into Earrings",
"source": "LIFE. Jul 10, 1939.",
"notes": " captions: \"Jamaican jug has glass flower. Little bird hangs head downward. 'Forbidden fruit' earrings are of clear glass with green leaves.\" ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1943,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "mini",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "…the boys in uniform have made bracelets, belts, necklaces, lapel gadgets, salt and pepper shakers, buckles…",
"author": "",
"title": "New Gadgets from an Old Felt Hat",
"source": "Recreation. vol. 37. 1943. p. 24",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1955,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "mini",
"secondary": "bomb",
"quote": "Orville Goerger is Copy Director of Commerical Letter, Inc., a St. Louis mail-advertising agency. But in addition to carrying on his regular work, he plays an important part in many 'extracurricular activities' that manifest his deep interest in direct mail. He is also guest lecturer on direct-mail copy at Washington University and St. Louis University; contributor of direct-mail articles to various trade publications; creator of award-winning gadget campaigns in the Direct-mail Advertising Association's annual competition; member of the Board of Governors, Advertising Club of St. Louis; and Chairman of the Skit-Writing Committee for the Advertising Club's annual Gridiron Dinner\" (210). \"All too often the direct-mail user planning a gadget mailing spends most of his planning time looking for a gadget that is new, different, and unusual. / Yet mere newness is not always a guarantee of resultfulness. Nor is the complexity or elaborate nature of the gadget any measure of the success it will achieve. Indeed, in many cases, best results are obtained when a relatively old idea is dug out and re-used. / \"This may be a bit hard to believe in these days when many of the new letter gadgets rival the atom bomb in their complexity. There are rubber-band-powered butterflies that spring out of a letter when it is opened, secret chemical processes that do magical things to a mailing piece when water is applied, Rube Goldberg mechanisms that build elaborate pop-ups when the mailing is unfolded--and literally hundreds of others. All are ingenious and do attract a large degree of attention. / Yet, surprisingly enough, their effectiveness is sometimes less than that of a relatively simple gadget like, for example, a burnt match. Both in the cost of the gadget and in the result it secures, the simple gadget frequently outscores its more expensive and elaborate brother. / Perhaps the reason for this is that the idea behind the gadget's use is more important than the gadget itself [ital. in original]. In fact, a too elaborate gadget will usually overpower the copy; the reader remembers the gadget, but the message of the mailing piece may never register with him. / One cardinal rule for using a gadget is to keep the gadget secondary in importance to the theme of the mailing piece. It is obviously difficult to do this when the gadget you are using is deliberately designed to dominate the mailing. / Another good rule for gadget usage is to keep the gadget merely a stepping stone into the copy. A good gadget is one that provides an interesting introduction to your message; it is a master of ceremonies whose duty it is to build up the real star of the show -- your copy. A good gadget never steals the show from the star or makes that star seem insignificant by comparison. The more sensational you make your gadget, the more difficult you make it for your copy message to hold its own. / Usually both of these objectives can be achieved by using a gadget or novelty effect of a simple sort. When a simple gadget is used, you are literarily forced into developing a powerful idea for tying in your message. In most cases a powerful idea plus the appeal of a good gadget is almost certain to click.\" The seven gadget ideas are: \"a penny gadget,\" literally a penny in the envelope; A piece of string, \"One reason for its appeal is that it permits motion in the mailing; by fastening only one end of the string, the other end swings freely and catches the eye\"; a feather; the \"burnt-edge letter,\" \"while not strictly a gadget, the burnt-edge letter is so dramatic and so simple that it should not be overlooked when it fits your scheme\"; cotton; postage stamp, so that \"people are getting something for nothing\"; miniature photograph",
"author": " Goerger, Orville",
"title": "Seven Simple Gadget Ideas for More Resultful Mailings",
"source": "Clyde Winfield Wilkinson, ed. Writing for Business: Selected Articles on Business Communication. 1955.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "multiple quotes"
},
{
"year": 1931,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "mini;misc",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Slynes, Elkweather & Uffley Gadgets. It is attractively filled with gadgets (as well as widjums and whassats) in all colors. Perhaps it is as well to mention that these are irregularly shaped objects varying in size from that of a marble to that of a small boulder. Price tags are conspicuously attached to them as they await purchasers in the window. They are much sought after for gifts by persons who wish to be considered original.\" (3) On Mr. Uffley's disease: \"What are leu- leucocytes?\" \"Leucocytes? A kind of gadget. Nothing but gadgets!\" George Uffley takes pride in being able to draw gadgets, which his young son is working up to. gadgets numbered \"Number C 75, Number S 8080, Number M 44.",
"author": "Wilde, Perciva",
"title": "Gadgets: A Mechanistic Tragicomedy",
"source": "Ten Plays for Little Theatres. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. 1931",
"notes": "cene opens outside",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1945,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "mini;placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The formal bag gives one the opportunity to indulge in a bit of whimsy. As stated before, it should be small, and it may be frivolous. For that reason a little bag of unusual character will be described here.\" (124). \"…eyelet embroidery of raisins or any other decoration one's fancy might dictate. Interesting textures or designs can be made with the tines of a fork, toothpick or any other gadget found in the kitchen that would leave an interesting impression when pressed in the dough.\" (265)",
"author": "Cox, Doris E. and Barbara Warren Weismann",
"title": "Glamorous Gadgets",
"source": "Creative Hands: An Introduction to Craft Techniques. Wiley: 1945",
"notes": "Does the gadget refer to the little bag itself, or a decoration on the bag?",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1916,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "misc",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "When I was a boy, I sailed over the ocean for six months without finding a single night, nothing but days all the time, until you forgot what darkness was like. Well, one night at twelve o'clock, though 'twas broad daylight, mind you, one of our crew, Martin O'Farrell, was playing 'The Boys of Wexford' on a gadget, when lo and behold! a sea serpent puts his head out of the waters and ses: 'Bravo, Martin, ses he.",
"author": "O'Brien, Seumas",
"title": "Land of Peace and Plenty",
"source": "The Whale and the Grasshopper: And Other Fables. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. 1916",
"notes": "a children's book?? seems like a stretch, just wanting to use the word as some authentic sailor dialect. ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1918,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "misc",
"secondary": "british",
"quote": "He also saw a bird--a great bird--on the way up, which he took to be a British eagle because it had 'large white circles on the under sides of its wings'! Sounds as though it were the now almost extinct Gadget.",
"author": "",
"title": "Proceedings of the Club",
"source": "Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal. v15n85. April 1918",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1919,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "misc",
"secondary": "lit",
"quote": "There she was. And there he was. In fact, putting it another way, there they both were. And now jolly well what? Archie rested his left ear against the forearm of a long, strongly built young man in a gray suit who had followed him into the car and was sharing his strap, and pondered. / Of course, in a way, the gadget was simple. The wheeze was, in a sense, straightforward and uncomplicated. What he wanted to do was to point out to the injured girl all that hung on her. He wished to touch her heart, to plead with her, to desire her to restate her war-aims, and to persuade her--before three o'clock, when that stricken gentleman would be stepping into the pitcher's box to loose off the first ball against the Pirates--to let bygones be bygones and forgive Augustus Biddle.",
"author": "Wodehouse, P.G.",
"title": "First Aid for Loony Biddle",
"source": "Cosmopolitan. v69n6. December, 1920",
"notes": "gadget as plan or ruse",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1920,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "misc",
"secondary": "british;lit",
"quote": "Damn!' said Freddie softly, and hurried off down the street. He wondered whether he had made a frightful ass of himself, spraying bank-notes all over the place like that to comparative strangers. Then a vision came to him of Nelly's eyes as they had looked at him in the lamp-light, and he decided--no, absolutely not. Rummy as the gadget might appear, it had been the right thing to do. It was a binge of which he thoroughly approved. A good egg!",
"author": "Wodehouse, P.G.",
"title": "The Little Warrior",
"source": "p. 117",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1920,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "misc",
"secondary": "nautical",
"quote": "I wish the guy that invented this solitaire gadget was cooped up with us,' he grumbled to himself. 'I'd treat him rough. This is the night for her to come through. King on a jack and I'm ditched again, by cripes.",
"author": "Paine, Ralph Delahaye",
"title": "Ships Across the Sea: Stories of the American Navy in the Great War.",
"source": "",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1922,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "misc",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "…and Joe Squibb, alias Paul, own the right to his designation of Sea-going Gadget",
"author": "Loomis, Alfred Fullerton",
"title": "The Cruise of the Hippocampus",
"source": "",
"notes": "as a nickname",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1929,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "misc",
"secondary": "trivial;ad",
"quote": "Here's the handiest, best-looking toilet case you ever saw. A simple solid-leather box, minus the tricky loops and gadgets and cubby holes which waste time and patience. You just toss toilet articles in. No packing at all … everything fits.",
"author": "",
"title": "New Idea in Toilet Kits",
"source": " Scientific American 141, (September 1929). p. 246-247",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1937,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "misc",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "There are several unneccesary complications in our income tax rates, which might well be dropped out, so that the ordinary man might have a chance to udnerstand what the rates really are\" (125). \"All these taxes should be as simple as possible. Gadgets such as the earned income credit are more nuisance than they are worth.\" (146) \"We make too much of the search for small bits of justice. Justice is a noble ideal, but far away. When a tax bill is before hte Ways and Means Committee, one interest and another come up to plead for some minor point of justice. One little gadget is added to meet one objection and another little gadget to overcome the disadvantages of the first, until the sum of a lot of little attempts to do the right is the great wrong of tying government and taxpayers in a mass of red tape",
"author": "Coyle, David Cushman",
"title": "Gadgets",
"source": "Why Pay Taxes? 1937. p165",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1939,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "misc",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "In other words, I should not be surprised if the youngest generation were taking a realistic view of politics. They are probably looking at government simply as a gadget, and deciding that the trouble with it is nothing but the old notorious trouble with gadgets--which is that they mostly don't work. The scout's young men may be taking the practical, hard-boiled view that government is a gadget which is meant to work for the good of society while you sleep, and is not doing it. This is a good sound view. Looking at government as a gadget, here are a few questions which come up. … First, then, since the governmental gadget is supposed to work for the rest of society, how can it best do that?",
"author": "Nock, Albert Jay",
"title": "The State of the Union: College Men and the State",
"source": "The American Mercury. v47n186, p. 229",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1941,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "misc",
"secondary": "bomb",
"quote": "This strange way of speaking can best be explained if we know what was going on in their minds during that time. Suppose, they said, that one could bombard the nuclei of atoms with charged particles. To obtain these, the experimenter would take simple atoms such as hydrogen, or helium, and knock off the outer electrons by throwing them violently around in an electrical discharge or in some other way. The gadget in which this \"knocking off\" process occurred would be connected to a large, highly evacuated glass or porcelain \"accelerating tube.\" The particles could be led into this tube and, by the application of high voltage, could be accelerated or shot against a target covered with the atoms of the element to be investigated.",
"author": "Sheppard, C.W.",
"title": "Atom Smashing: Two Methods",
"source": "Scientific American 164, (May 1941). p. 282-285",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1945,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "misc",
"secondary": "ad",
"quote": "AMAZING new Moto-Vator injects water vapor into motor just like newest fighter planes. Burns 15% water; saves 20% to 30% gas; Prevents Carbon; Increases power! … Not a gadget.",
"author": "",
"title": "",
"source": "Popular Science, Jan 1945.",
"notes": "i.e., not a triviality or a hoax",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1948,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "misc",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "In his laboratory rink Rawson demonstrated the proper functioning of the roller skate. The sake is attached to one of his gadgets which shows the flexible action of the skate when the weight of the body is shifted to the outside and then to the inside. You are then taken to another gadget with a platform just big enough to accommodate one person. Once on this gadget there are two arms that clamp firmly about your hips so that they are held firm. However, your limbs from the hips down are free, as is the upper part of your body. Your hands then grasp the handles about waist high. You are instructed to stand straight and close to the upright part of the gadget but to avoid stiffness. Once these instructions are carried out Rawson snaps an electric switch and you swing like the pendulum of a clock. This gadget conveys the action of the lean, and the beginner readily learns the feel and the meaning of the lean which he will apply later when the skates have been attached to his feet.",
"author": "Carpenter, W.H.",
"title": "Rawson System the Answer to Mass-Teaching Problem",
"source": "The Billboard. Mar 27, 1948. p. 108-110",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1948,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "misc",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "Still in their infancy--in an experimental stage according to Gallup and other poll leaders--these polls have been variously described. The Pulse of Democracy was the title of Gallup's book in 1940. 'The saviors of democracy' was the appraisal of one University of Chicago professor; 'a social gadget' was the epithet of another professor of the same university. 'A measure of our social illiteracy is the appropriate phrase, according to a leader in adult education. Other descriptors include 'seismograph of public opinion'; 'an extra-legal anticipation of election verdicts'; periodical and persistent auditor of public opinion.",
"author": "Waldrop, Arther Gayle",
"title": "Social Gadget or Savior of Democracy?",
"source": "Editor and Editorial Writer. Rinehart. 1948. p. 352",
"notes": "On the advent of public opinion polls beginning in the mid 1930s, and how newspaper editors should use/react to them.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1951,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "misc",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "For, like any social object, she is not an invention or a gadget so much as a cluster image that is both nourished by, and touches the life of, industrial man at several points.",
"author": "McLuhan, Marshall",
"title": "Chapter \"Love Novice\"",
"source": "The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. New York: The Vanguard Press, Inc. p. 122",
"notes": "On a sexy drum majorette in a Bayer ad.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1953,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "misc",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "But neither through microscopic ob­ servation nor ingenious physical models can we achieve a feeling of intimate con­ tact with the realities of cell division. The formulation has lacked substance, which in the biology of 1953 means a treatment in terms of identifiable mole­cules undergoing reactions translatable into the language of chemistry. What is the stuff of the mitotic apparatus and how are its constituents assembled into this beautiful little gadget? Answers to these questions solve no problems of mitosis, but put flesh between the bones of physical speculation and the clothing of microscopic appearance.",
"author": "Mazia, Daniel",
"title": "Cell Division",
"source": "Scientific American 189, (August 1953). p. 53-63 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1957,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "misc",
"secondary": "retro",
"quote": "But it may also be due to the style of the book. This is more journalistic than literary, and sometimes the choice of words is not too particular. For example, it quotes Samuel Butler to the effect that the \"hen is the egg's device for laying another egg.\" Now what Samuel Butler actually said, at least in his Life and Habit, was something different, namely, that \"a hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.\" He was worrying about hens not as gadgets, but as individuals. The lapse is an interesting one, an intimation that in the authors' minds problems of in­dividuality belong to the 19th century of the old-fashioned nature rather than to the 20th century of population genetics. Yet the paradox remains that the fascina­tion of biology to the novice as well as to the specialist depends even now on the relationship of the individual to his group, and not on considerations of the group alone.",
"author": "Oppenheimer, Jane",
"title": "Books",
"source": "Scientific American 197, (August 1957). p. 139-147",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1999,
"decade": 1990,
"primary": "misc",
"secondary": "german",
"quote": "",
"author": "Christ, Rainer, et. al.",
"title": "GADGET: Guarding Automobile Drivers through Guidance Education Technology.",
"source": "Kuratorium fur Verkehrssicherheit (KfV). Austrian Road Safety Board. Vienna: 1999.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 2012,
"decade": 2010,
"primary": "misc",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The idea that Tebow would solve the Jets' locker room issues is ridiculous. As a gadget player? Or third string QB? Come on. Can not see how this doesn't turn into a mess. Few bad games by Sanchez and won't people be calling for Tebow?\" Gadget play or gadget player as something quirky, unusual, probably can only be used a small number of times to throw off a defense before they adapt.",
"author": "",
"title": "",
"source": "http://www.quickish.com/tip/13688 March 20, 2012",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1941,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "misc;placeholder;gauge;tool",
"secondary": "war",
"quote": "To fight for democracy and against Hitlerism, we have turned our factories into arsenals--conscious that we are about to deprive ourselves of some of our most-prized comforts. We are diverting our iron and copper and aluminum to the making of guns and tanks and planes and ships to be used in the defense of democracy. … As Christmas approaches, everyone will feel it more and more. Santa Claus will be on hand, but he'll have to deal out Defense Bonds instead of gadgets.\" (1) Included in this list of \"luxuries and semiluxuries\" to be transmuted into wartime use: nylon and rayon stockings for powderbags and parachutes, and cotton stockings become fashionable. Automobile factories reduce car production by 50%. Steel and other raw materials diverted. \"And although the first 1942 models off the assembly line have the usual chromium trim and gadgets, when these supplies are used up there won't be any more.\" (2) \"On the search for defense jobs are the salesmen who have made their living from passenger cars, electric appliances, refrigerators, washing machines, and other non-defense machines which are comfortable and useful but not now as essential as planes and guns and tanks and ships. The factories which have been producing this rich stream of comforts are looking for defense contracts.\" (2) Retooling in automobile plants, for instance, takes 6-8 months. \"On the basis of these two quick surveys, OPM certifies to the War and Navy departments the facts it finds--that half or more of Jonesville's industrial workers are about to lose their jobs because the Jonesville Gadget Factory can't get copper, steel, zinc, or aluminum; that the gadget factory has certain specific machinery and that certain items can be used in tooling steel for a gun carriage or metal for a bomber, or castings for a tank, or whatever.\" (14) A plan to retain American workers: \"The men from the filling stations and the gadget factories, the soldiers who are released from the Army, and the skilled workmen who have been producing automobiles, washing machines, and the other useful implements of a high-standard-of-living nation, are turning rapidly into defense workers.\" (16)",
"author": "",
"title": "Guns Not Gadgets",
"source": "Washington, D.C.: Division of Information. Office for Emergency Management. 1941.",
"notes": "Something about transitioning assemblyline production from gadgets into wartime use? http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015023538385 ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1920,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "misc;propername",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "And the younger duck generation / Should all be taught to use / Some muffler apparatus, / To save them from abuse. / There's 'gadget' used on roosters / That will stop the 'morning crow;' / If Burt can adapt it to his ducks, / Hearty thanks to him will go!",
"author": "P.J.S.",
"title": "Just 'Ducks'",
"source": "The Mentor: Massachusetts State Prison. v21n2. December 1920",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1927,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "need",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "An Industrial Expert Tells Why Manufacturers Must Seek New Inventions to Keep Their Wheels Turning. […] \"'Our experience with inventors and with manufacturers indicates that there is a tremendous amount of inventive effort going to waste. A great deal of free-lance inventing means that the poor inventor spends a vast amount of time and thought and often hard-earned savings working up some useless gadget that nobody will have. \"The inventor must realize that the first requisite of any new invention is that there be a possibility of broad human need underlying it, and ma­ chinery for its distribution that can be made to turn without spending a small fortune. Let him remember the really outstanding inventions and think of them not as mechanical creations but as things that made it possible for humanity to ride where it had walked; to bridge space with conversation where it formerly required days to transmit messages. / Let him remember Gillette's safety razor. The money on this invention has been made not through the razor but the blades. / Gillette's funda­mental idea from which that invention sprung was that he wanted to get something for which there would be un­ limited repeat business. His hitting upon a blade that could be used and thrown away was a real stroke of genius. / This element of need is the thing that has been fundamental in inventions which have won commercial success. Before he spends a lot of time, therefore, let the inventor check up on the potential market.",
"author": "Wright, Milton",
"title": "Successful Inventors---XII",
"source": "Scientific American 137, (December 1927). 513-515 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1943,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "need",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "...gadgets that are being foisted upon the school budget were the inventions of teachers, growing out of their needs, I would try to appreciate them. But they are in truth, in most cases, being resisted by the teachers and they are…",
"author": "",
"title": "Too Many Gadgets",
"source": "Education, vol. 63. 1943",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1948,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "need",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Everybody has his own pet idea of some gadget he would like to see in general use. What is YOURS? Popular Science will pay $5.00 for each one published. Use government postcards only. Contributions cannot be acknowledged or returned.",
"author": "",
"title": "I'd like to see them make...",
"source": "Popular Science, November 1948",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1960,
"decade": 1960,
"primary": "need",
"secondary": "bomb",
"quote": "Never have Snow's twin warnings, of the danger of thinking that one weapon will solve our problems, and of the illusion that one can rely on maintaining technical superiority, been more vividly illustrated by the early years of nuclear weapons. Here the euphoria both of gadgets and of secrecy reached their highest and most disastrous intensity. Through a blind obeisance to a single weapon the West let down the strength of its conventional forces and failed even to develop prototypes of modern weapons for land warfare.",
"author": "Blackett, P.M.S.",
"title": "Books: C.P. Snow's Account of the Role of Two Scientists in Government [review of Science and Government]",
"source": "Scientific American 204, (April 1961). p. 191-205",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1968,
"decade": 1960,
"primary": "need",
"secondary": "matic",
"quote": "The situation is particularly alarming in view of the vested interests that already exist with respect to the development and sale of privacy-invading devices and procedures. Perhaps even more alarm­ing are two attitudes that, it seems to me, underlie the speed with which some of the privacy-invading practices have taken root, and that are likely to be the basis for a continuing demand for them. The first attitude can be characterized as an infatuation with gadgets and procedures that appear, at least to the layman, to be scientific. This attitude seems to lead people to fit problems and objectives to the tools that happen to be available. The second attitude, encouraged by an all too human desire to avoid personal responsibility for decisions is a preference for data and procedures that lend themselves to mechanization, in the belief that the elimination of human judgment is in itself desirable. I am reminded here of what the late Norbert Wiener used to say (as far back as 1950) with regard to the use of computers. He stressed that the greatest danger lies in our delegating to computers, out of ignorance or mental laziness, decisions that should remain ours.",
"author": "Fano, R. M.",
"title": "Books [review of Alan F. Westin, Privacy and Freedom]",
"source": "Scientific American 218, (May 1968). p. 149-159",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1948,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "need;gag",
"secondary": "month;list",
"quote": "Men receive sturdy, practical gadgets which they will prize. All are designed to answer a man's need for something he has wanted. Generally his gifts will lean toward the mechanical or business side. At any rate, you can bet he'll be happy with a membership in the Gadget-of-the-Month Club.\" \"Women receive useful, colorful and practical gadgets which they can use around the house, or perhaps on their person. Some gadgets have been unique household tools which have miraculously solved culinary headaches. Women are among the most enthusiastic members of the Gadget-of -the-Month Club.\" Later, ad for \"war surplus gadgets, heater relays, radio test filaments, electric trains, house chimes, etc.\" Ad for \"Gadget Mix,\" $1.19 a bag. Another ad for \"Catalog of 7000 Novelties.\" \"World's biggest catalog of amazing gifts, novelties, gadgets, fun makers",
"author": "",
"title": "$1 Will Solve Your Gift Problems: Gadget-of-the-Month Club Will Fill All Your Needs [ad].",
"source": "Popular Science, Nov. 1948. ",
"notes": "Men and women get different gadgets. img http://bit.ly/bQKzX3 img http://bit.ly/bQKzX3 img http://bit.ly/bQKzX3 ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1941,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "need;tool",
"secondary": "patent;cybernetics",
"quote": "Our man in charge of detecting trade-marks reports a wide-spread craze for compounds ending in \"matic.\" The word 'automatic' is presumably the father to these coinages, since they all seem intended to carry a connotation of self-propulsion. It is not a new idea. Oil-O-Matic, which may have been the first, has been the trade-mark for the Williams oil burner for a number of years. Within the last twelve months or so, however, the style has suddenly and for no apparent reason become extravagantly popular. / The automobile industry has been particularly prolific along these lines. One manufacturer feathers the Hydramatic drive, another the Electromatic clutch, another Powermatic shifting, a fourth the Simplimatic transmission. The newest models bring the Liquimatic drive and the Turbo-matic drive. / The vogue is also extensive in the electrical appliance field. Examples include the Vis-O-Matic, Aire-Matic and Attach-O-Matic sweepers; the Laundrimatic, Spira-Matic and ABC-O-Matic washers; the Electro-Matic and Touch-O-Matic radios. There is a Tel-A-Matic iron, and also an Adjust-O-Matic and a Steam-O-Matic. The Ade-O-Matic keeps things warm on the Center-Matic stove while the Coffeematic processes the java. Workers in industry ply Multi-matic and Camatic tools, while the Shift-o-matic is an electric typewriter carriage return. / Miscellaneous adaptations privilege the consumer to ride on Seal-O-Matic inner tubes; to sit hygienically in a Postur-Matic chair; to wear Glide-O-Matic arch resters while pushing a baby cab equipped with an Adjustmatic gear. What's more you can painlessly purchase any or all of the above articles on the Buy-O-Matic loan plan. And if there is anything left for taxes, you can figure the amount with the Tax-O-Matic income tax chart. / It could have been considered inevitable that somebody would come up with Matho-Matic. Sure enough, somebody did. It's the name for the nozzle on the Premier vacuum cleaner. So far as we know, Roomatic remains unclaimed. / P.S. At this very moment, Junior may be at large with the recently introduced Squirt-O-Matic water pistol.",
"author": "",
"title": "This Matic World",
"source": " Printers' Ink, October 24, 1941. vol. 197, p. 88",
"notes": "http://bit.ly/cLKIkF",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1886,
"decade": 1880,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Then the names of all the other things on board a ship! I don't know half of them yet; even the sailors forget at times, and if the exact name of anything they want happens to slip from their memory, they call it a chicken~fixing, or a gadjet, or a gill-guy, or a timmey-noggy, or a wim-womjust pro tem., you know.",
"author": "Brown, Robert",
"title": "Spunyarn and spindrift : a sailor boy's log of a voyage out and home in a china tea-clipper",
"source": "London: Houlston and Sons, xxi. 378.",
"notes": "FIND THIS. First cited OED entry for the word. ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1903,
"decade": 1900,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "nautical;british;lit",
"quote": "Thus we'ave the starboard side completely blocked an' the general traffic tricklin' over'ead along the fore-an'-aft bridge. Then Chips gets into her an' begins balin' out a mess o' small reckonin's on the deck. Simultaneous there come up three o' those dirty engine-room objects which we call 'tiffies,' an' a stoker or two with orders to repair her steamin' gadgets. They get into her an' bale out another young Christmas-treeful of small reckonin's--brass mostly.",
"author": "Kipling, Rudyard",
"title": "The Bonds of Discipline",
"source": "orig. 1903, first published in book form with Traffics and Discoveries, 1904",
"notes": "of a steam car, i.e. the Locomobile, where the protagonist picks up Pyecroft",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1903,
"decade": 1900,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "nautical;british;lit",
"quote": "Two Six Seven's steam-gadgets was paralytic. Our Mr. Moorshed done his painstakin' best--it's his first command of a war-canoe, matoor age nineteen…",
"author": "Kipling, Rudyard",
"title": "Their Lawful Occasions",
"source": "orig. 1903, then Traffics and Discoveries, 1904",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1904,
"decade": 1900,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "nautical;british",
"quote": "Why, I'm blest, if it ain't old Bobby first this time,' ejaculated the Flag-Captain, 'that's her boat, with the curly gadget on the bows, right enough. 'Strordinary!",
"author": "Parker, G.R.",
"title": "The Commission of H.M.S. Implacable: Mediterranean Station, 1901-1904",
"source": "p. ix.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1906,
"decade": 1900,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "nautical;definition",
"quote": "Gadget'--a make-shift name for any object.",
"author": "Beyer, Thomas",
"title": "The American Battleship in Commission: As Seen by an Enlisted Man",
"source": "Washington D.C.: Army and Navy Register. 1906",
"notes": "in a section of \"Man-o'-War Lino,\" or sailor terminology",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1910,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "nautical",
"quote": "In the cell-like silence of the white cylinder, he cast his eyes upon each bright gadget crowded about him--the telescope sights, air-blast, hoist-controller--as if trying to fix the look of each irrevocably on his mind. Then he shut his eyes as he crawled to the deck under the turret.",
"author": "Dunn, Robert",
"title": "The Real Atlantis: A Story of the United States Navy",
"source": "Everybody's Magazine. v22n1. January 1910. p. 112",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1918,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "You know, in the marines, when we can't think of a generic name for anything, we call it a 'gadget' or a 'gilguy.' Now, this man has won two Congressional Medals and has another coming. When we sighted the French coast, I was standing, where he could n't see me, just behind him; and I heard him say: 'I got two o' them gadgets now, an' one on its way. I wonder if I'll get another over here.",
"author": "Kauffman, Reginald Wright",
"title": "The American Marines",
"source": "The Living Age. no. 3861. July 6, 1918, p.47",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1918,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "nautical;definition",
"quote": "But what I should like to know is, what the deuce is a doo-hickie?' 'A doo-hickie?' replied the squadron commander. 'A doo-hickie? H'm'm. George, how would you describe a doo-hickie?' The officer appealed to puffed his pipe in silence for a moment [sic]. 'Well,' he said at length, 'you know more or less what a gadget's like?' 'Yes.' 'And a gilguy?' 'Yes.' 'Well, a doo-hickie is something like that, only smaller as a rule.' […] The Stranger within the Gates of the Navy-that-Flies had the drink, and from then onwards forebore to ask any more questions. But he still sometimes wonders what the functions of a doo-hickie might be.",
"author": "Bartimeus",
"title": "The Navy Eternal: Which is The Navy-That-Floats, The Navy-That-Flies, and The Navy-Under-The-Sea",
"source": "New York: George H. Doran Company. 1918 p. 100",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1919,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "definition",
"quote": "One of the city departments require, let us say, five gross of woven wire gadgets--gadgets in this case meaning anything you may be pleased to imagine. Upon request of this request, the Division of Purchases sends a copy of the requisition to each gadget house in the city, as shown by the division's mailing lists, and requests quotations.",
"author": "",
"title": "Selling to Toledo: A Big Market That Should Interest Sellers of Many Lines of Goods",
"source": "The Toledo City Journal. v4n5, Feb. 1 1919",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1920,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "They call out the seconds and she begins to porpoise, adn at zero out of water goes her periscope again and the Herr Kapitan has another look, and it's a sure bet then he's all set to blow up the works. He whistles to the guy Fred to be ready and Fred fixes his eyes on a gadget that shows red and green lights when it flashes. And the diving rudder man stands about an ninch [sic] closer to his little wheel, meaning he's all set too.",
"author": "Connolly, James Brendan",
"title": "Hiker Joy",
"source": "",
"notes": "submarine sighting in on a ship to torpedo",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1921,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "We will suppose that a factory is of just medium size and that it is governed by a General Manager and a Superintendent. Also, that it has a Statistical Department and the usual number of factory departments with a foreman in charge of each. The product is a small machine, which we will call a gadget, and it is composed of a few castings, which are purchased from an outside foundry, some commerical parts, and some parts which are made in the various departments. The factory has been turning out about thirty machines a day, but, it is desired to increase this output to forty.",
"author": "",
"title": "The 'Exception Principle' in Management",
"source": "Engineering and Contracting. Novemer 23, 1921",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1922,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Casey awoke under the vivid impression that some one was driving a gadget into his skull with a 'double-jack.'",
"author": "Bower, B.M.",
"title": "The Trail of the White Mule",
"source": "p. 101",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1922,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Now, of course there's no reason why a Russian should not use a German sub if he could get hold of it, but what were they doing over here in the East River is what gets me. I don't believe they were just rum-runners, even if Murphy and his crowd did find a lot of booze over there, and what was that cigar-shaped sub-sea gadget they were pulling along with 'em?' 'Why, I think that's all simple,' declared Tom. 'They probably brought liquor in here with the submarine and carried it to the garage in that torpedolike thing.'",
"author": "Verrill, A. Hyatt",
"title": "The Radio Detectives",
"source": "D. Appleton and Company: 1922",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1923,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "definition",
"quote": "dinkus, n. Thing. Also Doodinkus, Doodad, Dinglebob, Jigger, Thingumbob, Gadget.",
"author": "Taylor, J.L.B. ",
"title": "Snake County Talk",
"source": "Dialect Notes: Publications of the American Dialect Society. vol. 5 part 6. 1923",
"notes": "\"Snake County\" is the name, before 1849, and some time thereafter as a nickname, for McDonald County, Missouri. ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1927,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "After the long and toilsome rise, American civilization had reached, at the summer solstice of Normalcy, the high plateau of permanent peace and prosperity. […] Notes of jubilee drowned the plaintive cries of farmers and the queasy doubts of querulous critics. According to the golden appearance of things, intensity would create novelty upon novelty, gadget upon gadget, to keep the nation's machine whirling; inevitably outlets would be found for the accumulations of capital and the torrents of commodities; and employment would be afforded for laborers befitting their merits and diligence. Articles for comfort and convenience, devices for diversion and amusement were multiplying with sensational rapidity, giving promise of a satisfaction even more gratifying. Corporations were swelling in size, holding companies were rising to dizzy heights, the tide of liquid claims to wealth were flooding in.",
"author": "Beard, Charles Austin and Marry Ritter Beard",
"title": "America in Midpassage. The Rise of American Civilization: Volume 3",
"source": "New York: Macmillan Company. 1927. p. 3-4",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1928,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "ad",
"quote": "Where did you put that gadget, thingamabob or whatsit that you saved for just such an occasion as this? Closets will have to be searched, the basement looked into, ad you may even desperately ransack the attic. Use a good flashlight.",
"author": "",
"title": "",
"source": "Popular Science, October 1928",
"notes": "Eveready battery ad",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1929,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "With the holiday season three weeks past Mr. Edgell had about gone through his presents; all that remained was an odd-looking gadget of nickel, which bore the cryptic stamp, 'Griffo-W128. Pat. 1927.' Mr. Edgell didn't know what it was meant for. He had been bafled by it ever since Christmas morning, when it had arrived from the Dillards, along with some handkerchiefs of a sort of bleached burlap, and a tie.\" Don't you know what it is? \"It's a--a--puzzle.' There was a long pause, and finally Mr. Edgell elaned forward in his chair. 'Yes, Alberta,' he said, sweetly, 'and it's a damn good one.",
"author": "Reed, Johnston",
"title": "The Amateur Gadgeteer",
"source": "The New Yorker. January 19, 1929. p. 59-60",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1933,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The equipment consists of a mail-order-house bench grinder and quarter horsepower motor, two Carborundum wheels and some Carborundum grains, two felt wheels and powdered pumice, a few small gadgets, a strong thumb and patience. The material is low­ priced mineral in the rough--moss agates, rose quartz, carnelian, jasper, chalcedony, tiger eye and so on--obtainable from mineral dealers, or often is most unpromising stones simply picked up while on country rocks.",
"author": "Ingalls, Albert G.",
"title": "The Amateur Rides a New Hobby",
"source": "Scientific American 148, (February 1933) p. 89-89",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1934,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "definition;trivial",
"quote": "[The Food and Drugs Act] defines a drug as an agent used in the treatment of disease. Freckles, excess hair, wrinkles, enlarged pores, falling hair, obesity, and dandruff are not dis­ eases; they may be blemishes or botherations, but they no more classify as diseases than do irregularly architectures noses and shortness of stature. Hence cosmetics are not drugs, unless they make some specific claim to cute disease on their labels-which, generally speaking, they never do. Cosmetics are surely not foods. Gadgets to straighten noses are not drugs, and neither are mechanical chiropractors intended to stretch the short men to great height so that they may avoid the failures and humiliations those of small stature (like Napoleon) undergo. / Therefore the present Food and Drugs Act does not cover cosmetics. It does not cover therapeutic gadgets and contraptions, some of them selling for 10 dollars and costing 75 cents to make, and all of them as astonishingly magical in their claimed powers as the miraculous necklace some firm got out to cure goiter. […] In . consequence of these deficiencies which have made Dr. Harvey W. Wiley's Food and Drugs Act obsolete, a revision of that act has been prepared to supersede the old statute. It was written by legal and scientific experts in the Department of Agriculture, gained the blessing of the Administration, and was introduced in the Senate by Senator Copeland in June 1933 as S. 1944. That bill does specifically cover cosmetics. It covers gadgets and contrivances. It covers advertising, applying the same standard of accuracy to it that the present law applies to food and drug labels. It sets up food standards and it establishes minimum tolerances for the poison con­ tent of foods.",
"author": "Harding, T. Swann",
"title": "The Revised Food and Drugs Bill--What it Means to You",
"source": "Scientific American 150, (February 1934). p.68-70",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1937,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Whittling and Woodcarving. by E.J. Tangerman. It appears, at least from the advertisements of cutlery people, that whittling and woodcarving are coming back as serious hobbies. This volume proves it. Starting with a discussion of how to make the simplest toys and gadgets, trinkets, and wood chains, it proceeds to discuss the carving of human figures, elaborate chests, plaques, designs, and moldings for furniture.",
"author": "",
"title": "Books Selected by the Editors",
"source": " Scientific American 156, (April 1937) p. 276-278",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1938,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "No one doubts today that we live in an age of alloys, for every day marks the birth of some new alloy with particularly useful qualities. We have become accustomed to reading about alloy trains, alloy aircraft, alloy trimmings, and alloy gadgets. Yet, it is surprising to know that until recently the whole process of alloy making has been a shot in the dark, a cut and try process.",
"author": "French, Sydney J.",
"title": "The Science of the Alloy Building",
"source": " Scientific American 158, (February 1938). p. 78-80 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1939,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "trivial;ad",
"quote": "who can assist by reason of the right contacts with large business interests, in exploring an invention as universally applicable as steam. A test plant is nearly completed and together with the patent situation amply financed. This is not another gadget but something of epoch-making importance. There is nothing like it in existence and the art is susceptible of profitable development in a hundred directions for years to come. The man is more important than the $5,000 which he must be prepared to lose, but the chances are better than 50% for him to make am illion, if the test plant operates, and extensive and expensive research and independent checking indicate it will.",
"author": "",
"title": "Wanted: A Man With $5,000",
"source": "Scientific American 160, (June 1939) p. 372-389",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1945,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "When a chemist or engineer has to decide whether he can obtain an improvement in a process by introducing some modification of practice, for instance, by the adoption of some 'gadget,' he performs two sets of trials, one employing the gadget (or its equivalent) and the other omitting it, and then compares the results.",
"author": "Evans, U. R.",
"title": "Of the t-Test to Chemists and Engineers",
"source": "Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry. vol. 64. 1945. p. ii?",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1945,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "That is why the would-be mystic is always told to refrain from busying himself with matters which do not refer to his ultimate goal, or in relation to which he cannot effectively do immediate and concrete good. This self-denying ordinance covers most of the things with which, outside business hours, the ordinary person is mainly preoccupied--news, the day's installment of the various radio epics, this year's car models and gadgets, the latest fashions. But it is upon fashions, cars and gadgets, upon news and the advertising for which news exists, that our present industrial and economic system depends for its proper functioning. For, as ex-President Hoover pointed out not long ago, this system cannot work unless the demand for non-necessaries is not merely kept up, but continually expanded.",
"author": "Huxley, Aldous",
"title": "Distractions",
"source": " Vedanta for the Western World. ed. Christopher Isherwood. Vedanta Press: 1945. p. 129",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1947,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "war",
"quote": "Credit for the various gadgets developed by the scientific fraternity during the war has been generously given by military men. But they know, and we know, that the war was mainly fought and won with the weapons available at the beginning of the war. We had developed an imposing array of 'trick devices' by V-J Day, but how much better it would have been, how many lives and how much money could have been saved had these devices been ready at the start of hostilities! … \"Next time the gadgets must be ready when the shooting starts.",
"author": "",
"title": "An Introduction to the Problem of Guided Missiles",
"source": " Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Nov 1947. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1948,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "love;month",
"quote": "Charlie Halligan and Billy Newcomb are doing okay with gadgets in Spencer, Ia., according to Eddie E. Gillespie, who also reports that he has heard that Glen Hosberg is on the sick list. … Al (Pop) Adams, former partner with Stanley Naldrett in the operation of numerous gadget layouts, has returned to the pitch game after an absence of five years. He's currently operating his gadget stand on the Pacific Coast to reported big geedus counts. … Following a stay of many months, Stanley Naldrett closed his gadget bar in Silver's store, Birmingham, September 30, and headed for Chicago where he plans to visit briefly and cut up a few jackies. He will reopen his gadget layout in the Birmingham store January 3.",
"author": "Baker, Bill",
"title": "Pipes for Pitchmen",
"source": "The Billboard. October 2, 1948",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1949,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "war;bomb",
"quote": "The effects of war on science itself were also both good and bad. Unfortunately, the spectacular achievements of the war years led many people to believe that the sole function of science was to develop either weapons of war or the gadgets of peace. Radar, rockets, and the atomic bomb, together with plastic automobiles, nuclear power plants, and television sets were regarded as the sole products of science, the reason for its existence, or the chief currency with which to measure its value.\" Example: \"A steel mill is built to make steel. As the bars of steel come out of the mill the ear not labeled as to whether they shall be used for battleships or tanks or trucks or guns or plows. Steel is a raw material. It will be fabricated into whatever structures, gadgets, devices, or weapons are most in demand at the moment.\" \"Too often we judge the value of knowledge by the new machines or gadgets or weapons it provides. But a more far-reaching effect of knowledge is its effects on men's minds.\" ",
"author": "DuBridge, Lee A.",
"title": "Why Another Cyclotron?",
"source": "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Vol. 5, No. 6. Jun 1949. p. 201. ",
"notes": "Strangely, \"gadget\" here is a luxury particular to peacetime. Four years after the \"gadget\" codename of the atomic bomb.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1949,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "In 1944 he wrote, \"I often wonder how privileged I am out here, at my age, Whenever I want something I go to the optical or machine shop and find every­ thing at my disposal. If I get into a jam for a gadget there's always someone to say, 'Let me do it for you.'",
"author": "Ingalls, Albert G.",
"title": "The Amateur Astronomer",
"source": "Scientific American 180, (April 1949). p. 60-63",
"notes": "On Russell Porter, d. Feb 22, 1944, the \"patron saint of amateur astronomers.\" Referring to accessories for telescopes, as gadget was used among amateur astronomers, but in an indeterminate sense here.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1951,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "trivial;american",
"quote": "Society begins to take on the character of the kept woman whose role is expected to be submission and luxurious passivity. Each day brings its addition of silks, trinkets, and shiny gadgets, new pleasure techniques and new pills for pep and painlessness.",
"author": "McLuhan, Marshall",
"title": "Chapter \"Freedom to Listen\"",
"source": "The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. New York: The Vanguard Press, Inc. p. 140",
"notes": "on Senate hearing of NBC president. Later uses the phrase \"high frequency of gadgets\" to describe this",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1951,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "With the risks attendant on all such statements, I would like to put forward the alternative view that operations re­ search is at the diaper stage, that its great successes are in the future. First, as to its military applications: Operations research is applied at three levels, the use of weapons or gadgets, tactics and strategy. For simplicity consider only the first of these. The notion that we have learned the optimal use of present weapons, .or those in the development stage, Will not bear scrutiny.",
"author": "",
"title": "Letters",
"source": "Scientific American 185, (December 1951). p. 2-6",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1952,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "lit",
"quote": "The Gadget Maker is a 1955 novel by Maxwell Griffith. It is notable for its vivid depiction of an otherwise-rarely-described milieu: campus life at MIT in the 1940s. It also presents a striking engineers-eye-view of guided missile development at a West Coast aerospace firm during the early days of the cold war. On its appearance, the New York Times described The Gadget Maker as \"the story of a misguided zealot devoted body and soul to the advancement of knowledge\" and called it \"an absorbing narrative [and] a clear presentation of technological subject-matter, written with stylistic ease and fluidity by an author who is himself a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.\" Just a few phrases in the novel, such as \"Essentially, engineering was the skilled bending and shaping of metals into airplanes, bridges, cars, gadgets galore. Still, it required more than a skill at fabrication--an understanding, some vital spark of creativeness.",
"author": "Griffith, Maxwell",
"title": "The Gadget Maker",
"source": "The Gadget Maker. Philadelphia: Lippincott. 1954. p. 124-5",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1952,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "Your issue on automatic control is a vivid portrayal of a materialistic culture in which bright young men study engineering instead of philosophy. Only two authors (the first and last) weigh the tremendous problems that will follow the advances described by the other six. Each of these two speaks with the circumspection of one who elects to drift with the current rather than inquire too critically as to its direction. Less inhibited philosophers--say Bertrand Russell, Karl Menninger, Julian Huxley, Henry Thoreau and Philip Wylie--have been genuinely worried that so much genius is directed at producing more and better gadgets rather than improving the aims, morals and happiness of man him­ self, a field commonly left to opportunists and superstition-mongers. Is it not cause for alarm that Nobelists in peace­ unlike those in physics or medicine­ have often been conspicuous only by their absence? Or that such a basic human urge as pride of achievement (the family piano) is steadily giving ground to pride of ownership (the family television)?\" ",
"author": "",
"title": "",
"source": "Scientific American 187, (November 1952). p. 2-6",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1952,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "retro",
"quote": "Model Jets and Rockets for Boys, by Raymond F. Yates. Harper & Brothers ($2.50). Mr. Yates gives a brief history of rockets, and then devotes several chapters to detailed instructions on how to build jet propelled aircraft, racing cars and boats, using ordinary house­ hold items and a few gadgets that can be purchased inexpensively. A complete jet engine that will run a model plane at 200 miles per hour costs only $1.95; fuel tanks can be made out of empty 35-milli­ meter film containers. […] Coggins and Pratt offer for a somewhat older age group an interesting account of the history and development of these fateful gadgets. Their book describes the tightly packed, powder-filled paper tubes used in the 13th century by the Chinese to frighten off the Mongolian invaders, the Congreve rockets the British lobbed into Baltimore in 1814.",
"author": "Newman, James R.",
"title": "Children's Books",
"source": "Scientific American 187, (December 1952). p. 78-83",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1953,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "retro",
"quote": "Galton's curiosity led him to study the peculiarities of identical twins, the sterility of heiresses, the pro­ portion of pretty girls in different British towns, hypnosis and autosuggestion. He also built a number of mechanical and electrical gadgets, some of which were as useful as they were ingenious. Galton was an enthusiastic sponsor of new causes, but he was equally hospitable to new evidence by which these causes might be overturned.",
"author": "McCulloch, Warren S.",
"title": "Books",
"source": "Scientific American 188, (May 1953), p. 96-102",
"notes": "review of Eugenics: Galton and After by C.P. Blacker",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1954,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Like the theory of games, it is a method of pure mathematics that can be applied to human affairs. It is used to calculate the best possible solution to a problem that involves a number of variables. […] To illustrate the method let us take a highly simplified hypothetical case. We have a factory that can make two products, which for simplicity's sake we shall name 'widgets' and 'gadgets.'",
"author": "Cooper, William W., and Charnes, Abraham",
"title": "Linear Programming",
"source": "Scientific American 191, (August 1954). p. 21-23 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1956,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "My new pipe is not a new model, not a new style, not a new gadget, not an improvement on old style pipes. It is the first pipe in the world to use an ENTIRELY NEW PRINCIPLE for giving unadulterated pleasure to pipe smokers. … all the disappointing gadgets… You might expect all this to require a complicated mechanical gadget…",
"author": "",
"title": "Will You Smoke My New Kind of Pipe 30 Days at My Risk?",
"source": "",
"notes": "advertisement",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1958,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "The late John von Neumann liked to cite this example of the relation between technological development and pure mathematics: A hundred and fifty years ago one of the most important problems of applied science––on which development in industry, commerce and government depended––was the problem of saving lives at sea The statistics of the loses were frightful. The money and effort expanded to solve the problem were frightful too––and sometimes ludicrous. No gadget, however complicated, was too ridiculous to consider––ocean-going passenger vessels fitted out like outrigger canoes may have looked funny, but they were worth a try.",
"author": "Halmos, Paul R.",
"title": "Innovation in Mathematics",
"source": "Scientific American 199, (September 1958). p. 66-73",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1959,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "…the intellectual climate of our time. We tend to think in terms of mass production and of gadgets. As far as production of commodities is concerned this has proven exceedingly fruitful. But if the idea of mass production and gadget worship is transferred to the problem of man and into the field of psychiatry it destroys the very basis which makes producing more and better things worth while.",
"author": "Fromm, Erich",
"title": "Psychoanalysis and Religion. 1959",
"source": "p. 98",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1959,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "A case history of a schizophrenic child who converted himself into a \"machine\" because he did not dare be human. His story sheds light on emotional development in a mechanized society. […] To counteract this fear we gave him a metal wastebasket in lieu of a toilet. Eventually, when eliminating into the wastebasket, he no longer needed to take off all his clothes, nor to hold on to the wall. He still needed the tubes and motors which, he believed, moved his bowels for him. But here again the all-important machinery was itself a source of new terrors. In Joey's world the gadgets had to move their bowels, too. He was terribly concerned that they should, but since they were so much more powerful than men, he was also terrified that if his tubes moved their bowels, their feces would fill all of space and leave no room to live. He was thus always caught in some fearful contradiction.",
"author": "Bettelheim, Bruno",
"title": "Joey: A 'Mechanical Boy'",
"source": " Scientific American 200, (March 1959). p. 116-127",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1960,
"decade": 1960,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "retro",
"quote": "The first of the sciences to be placed on a modern footing––that of anatomy–– was one which the artists cultivated and which was governed by direct observation. It was the artists who even set up the cry that one must not be satisfied to learn from the ancients or to take everything from books; one must examine nature for oneself. The artists were often the engineers, the designers of fortifications, the inventors of gadgets; they were nearer to the artisan than were the scholars, and their studios often had the features of a laboratory or workshop. […] Science and craftsmanship, combined with the state of the market, enabled them, however, to indulge their zeal for gadgets, mechanical improvements and inventions.",
"author": "Butterfield, Herbert",
"title": "The Scientific Revolution",
"source": "Scientific American 203, (September 1960). p.173-192",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1967,
"decade": 1960,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "retro",
"quote": "Presenting an issue on materials in two aspects: (1) the fundamental nature of metals, ceramics, glasses, polymers and composite materials and (2) the properties that all materials possess in varying degrees. […] The tools, guns, gadgets and cathedrals of the Middle Ages, the instruments for the rise of modern science, the machines and structures of the 19th-century engineers––all were made of materials that had been known centuries before the rise of Greece.",
"author": "Smith, Cyril Stanley",
"title": "Materials",
"source": "Scientific American 217, (September 1967). p. 68-79",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1970,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "love;lit",
"quote": "of those she had in Brooklyn. She picked up a round tin box and shook it to hear the rattle of the cooky cutters inside, then recalled suddenly the face of a summer friend of theirs, a painter who had visited them frequently in August. She recalled how he had picked up each gadget on this counter and held it close to his face, tracing its shape with his fingers and how, when he arrived, he washed his hands in the kitchen sink, using the yellow kitchen soap. She had liked him very much, liked his substantial, handsome face, the way the […]",
"author": "Fox, Paula",
"title": "Desperate Characters",
"source": "New York: Norton, 1970.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1970,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "lit",
"quote": "[…] hundred-dollar bill and presented it to Sally, indicating which of her buying plans had interested me. I expected her to look disappointed. but somewhere she had learned to keep her expectations at a minimum, and, without fuss, she snapped the money into her purse, sent me a naughty reproach with her eyes when I groped for her, and went off: o the bathroom to prepare her pre-coital toilet. I stretched out on the bed and waited. This was an interim which I had grown used to since the advent of intimate hygiene and devilish gadgets to yard off conception. One no longer coaxed and vheedled a woman into bed, there to have her in a twirl of unconsidered passion. No, now, at the nace nent when Molly Bloom said \" yes, \" at the instant shell the dark declivities are moist and ready, there: comes a whispered entreaty for patience and the wavy clump of footsteps in the darkness as the lady lips away to her vaginal laboratory.",
"author": "Richardson, Jack",
"title": "A Lively Commerce",
"source": "Harpers. August 1970. pp. 82-89.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1970,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "matic",
"quote": "In adult life, in depressive and schizophrenic states, suicides and macabre mutilations are performed in the kitchen; and death by gas oven asphyxiation is a common type of suicide. Cases are reported where the individuals put their heads into the oven. The obsessive-compulsive neurotic fears sharp instruments and constantly worries about the gas heater being turned off or the toaster being disconnected. In the hysterical individual, the appliances often symbolize objects of both an oral and genital nature, wherever there can be substitute gratification and punishment. The hysterical patient may be fascinated with gadgetry and at the same time be worried about the safety of such automatic controls as timers, defrosters, and thermostats, as are built into the appliances. All modes of energy are transformed, neutralized, and regulated in the service of making life easier and supposedly more pleasureful. Very often the hope is that new devices will be both labor-saving and in the long run \" pay for themselves. \" Abetting the economic factor is the condensation of many processes and functions in the same unit.",
"author": "Hsu, Sung-peng",
"title": "A Buddhist Leader in Ming China",
"source": "Pennsylvania State University Press. 1970",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1972,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Other than his merchandising interests and his fondness for tinkering with electrical gadgets, Muntz had also been involved in auto racing during the 1930s, owning three midget racers. Being retired at last, he now saw himself sliding slowly into a funk of boredom.",
"author": "",
"title": "Life with a Mad Motor Mogul",
"source": "Sports Illustrated. 17 April 1972. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1972,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "war",
"quote": "The striking thing about the stories, when I listen to the tape now, is that they are both laughing over and over about the absurdity of the situation that our brother journalists were (are) attempting to record as another solemn chapter in the continuing history of warfare, meanwhile celebrating the old macho exhilaration of being shot at and missed. Flynn and Stone enjoyed the war. So did every other correspondent in Vietnam. We enjoyed the bitter humor and the proximity to all the gadgetry of war; even those of us who never shared the all-American fascination with weapons of death got a certain charge from being with those who did. We were heirs to the tradition of war, and war still meant finding the personal courage to edge right up to death while staying calm. It was no more or less complicated than a response to the ultimate challenge as outdated and senseless as a barroom showdown. And so we had this war, and my friends and I had to be there.",
"author": "Young, Perry Deane",
"title": "Two of the Missing",
"source": "Harpers. December 1972",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1972,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "If exports continue at their present rate, there will not be nearly enough money to pay the debt after Argentines get through importing raw materials for industry and foreignmade gadgets and luxury goods. To avoid political trouble, the- military government has been trying to keep wages ahead of prices by printing money and pumping it into the economy.",
"author": "Novitski, Joseph",
"title": "Argentines, Richest Latins, Seek End to Troubles and a New Start",
"source": "New York Times. 19 August 1972",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1973,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Besides fishing, Nixon rides around the 125-acre island on a golf cart, and swims in the shark-filled waters-always, of course, under close watch by Secret Service agents. Abplanalp was born in The Bronx to Swiss immigrant parents. His father was a machinist who instilled in his son a liking for gadgetry and tinkering. Abplanalp studied engineering at Villanova, but dropped out to open his own machine shop.",
"author": "",
"title": "The President's Quiet Creditor",
"source": "Time Magazine. 11 June 1973.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1973,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "All an expert would need in the way of equipment to alter tapes would be a recording studio, two to four quality tape recorders, a variety of auxiliary gadgets and perhaps an echo chamber. First he would listen to the tape over and over again until he felt at home with the speech patterns-voice modulation as well as breathing space. When he was satisfied that he knew the voices as well as his own, he would do the easy part first-simply cutting out certain words or sentences with a razor blade and splicing the tapes together.",
"author": "",
"title": "Could the President's Tapes Be Altered",
"source": "Time Magazine. 11 May 1973. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1973,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Bentsen sees himself as a pragmatist with a healthy concern for the taxpayers' burdens. He' considered the supersonic transport \" a piece of technological elegance this country couldn't afford, \" and even if it could he didn't think it should be charged to the tax? payers. He doesn't buy every gadget the Pentagon wants. As subcommittee chairman he bucked Chair? man John Stennis of Senate Armed Services on accelerated development of the Trident submarine because it struck him as poorly managed and a waste of money (perhaps $500 million).",
"author": "",
"title": "Comment",
"source": "The New Republic. 29 December 1973.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1975,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Until the mid-1960s, air-traffic controllers had to rely on old-fashioned radar to scan the skies and keep track of moving \" blips \" that represented individual aircraft. Now the controllers' vision has been increased enormously by improved radar and new electronic gadgetry. Every aircraft that flies above 18,000 ft. and in designated control areas carries a radar transponder that answers ground radar by flashing an identifying signal.",
"author": "",
"title": "Fear of Flying",
"source": "Time Magazine, 22 Dec 1975. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1976,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "lit",
"quote": "The only thing he could see was a tricycle in the background, dimly. \" Big B., can you hear me? \" \" Where are you? \" \" It's Endor. \" \" Talking from where? \" \" On the floor, \" the voice said. \" Don't want you to see me. But I want you to hear. Can you do that? \" \" You're coming in weak. \" \" How about now? \" \" Better. \" \" I'm down on the floor shouting up into the talk gadget. Don't try to see me. Do you know where I am? \" \" Down on the floor. \" \" I mean where in what locale. \" \" The hobby room. \" \" Good guess. \" \" I recognized the tricycle. \" \" That's where I am, all right. Walked in early this morning. Came in from the hole. Came limping through the mud and grass. I've been digging, lad. Clawing my way down.",
"author": "DeLillo, Don",
"title": "Ratner's Star",
"source": "",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1976,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "placeholder",
"secondary": "lit",
"quote": "\" I don't accept the call. \" \" That voice sounded familiar, \" Simjian said. \" Was that who I think it was? \" \" Yes. \" \" Because if it was, he's famous for his personal sleaziness. \" \" He's completely self-taught. \" \" Not to mention the tasteless events he likes to host, \" she said. \" Degenerate ceremonies featuring objects and gadgets that mock our bodies. \" | \" Speaking of ceremonies, \" Maidengut said, \" I have some depressing news for almost everyone here. A torch-lighting ceremony is scheduled for the Great Hall. Tomorrow at dusk. All thirty-two of the resident Nobel laureates are supposed to be in attendance. \" \" What's depressing about that? \" Simjian said. \" Nobel laureates only. Nobody else allowed. Pretty inconsiderate if you ask me. They might have included some of the rest of us. \"",
"author": "DeLillo, Don",
"title": "Ratner's Star",
"source": "",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1918,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "placeholder;gauge",
"secondary": "nautical;definition;british",
"quote": "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\". / 'Gadget' is a colloquialism in the Navy for any small fitment or uncommon article--for example, 'a curious gadget.' I never came across anybody who could give a derivation.\" -A.G. Kealy / \"In a list of words and phrases used by our soldiers at the Front, sent to me recently from Flanders, there is the word 'gadget,' and its meaning is given as billets or quarters of any description, 'and sometimes it is used to denote a thing of which the name is not known.'\" --Archibald Sparke. / 'Webster's New International Dictionary' says that 'gadget' is often used of something novel, or not known by its proper name (slang).' It is a word in frequent use in this sense by seamen and other workers.\" --F.A. Russell",
"author": "Tapley-Soper",
"title": "Notes and Queries",
"source": "",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1924,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "placeholder;gauge;cog;naval",
"secondary": "definition;british",
"quote": "Gadgets (cxlvii. 427).--In J. Manchon's 'Le Slang' (Paris, 1923) I find: Gadget, s. lo N[autique] toute pièce de machine; 2º F[amilier] employé à la place d'un mot qu'on ne trouve pas: chose, machin, truc; M[ilitaire] une chose quelconque [an unspecified thing], le système, l'affaire (à faire, à avoir, à réussir): the gadget is to barge in on the Chief fright away, at the double. La chose à faire c'est de rentrer tout de suite dans le patron et au pas d'gym [d'oum?]. See also 12 S. iv. 187, 281. --John B. Wainewright. / Professor Ernest Weekley, in 'A Concise Etymological Dictionary of Modern English,' deals with this word thus: 'Gadget [neol.]..? From gadge, early Scottish form of gauge. --H. ASkew. / Spennymoor. I am told that this word has a naval origin and was, and is, used to signify any piece of loose tackle.\"",
"author": "",
"title": "Gadgets",
"source": "Notes and Queries, 1925; CXLVIII: 15",
"notes": "in Notes and Queries (Notes and Queries, 1924; CXLVII: 427): Gadgets--I should like to know where the above word came from. It is used when speaking of small luxuries or improvements in motor cars, such as a new speed recorder; new level to show the height of ascent; a new method of showing license, etc., etc. -M.V.D. Which was answered in the subsequent issue Notes and Queries",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1955,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "placeholder;instrument",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Walter H. Munk is professor of geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. He was born in Austria--'a country which boasts of several oceanographers but of no oceans.' He took an M.S. in geophysics at the California Institute of Technology and, in 1947, a Ph.D. in oceanography at the Scripps Institution. He writes: 'Ever since I first took up science I have resented the need of having to specialize, of having to decide whether to push a pencil, to play with gadgets or to do field work. I have ended up in a field where I can do a bit of each.",
"author": "",
"title": "The Authors",
"source": "Scientific American 193, (September 1955). p. 32-46",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1970,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "placeholder;instrument",
"secondary": "lit",
"quote": "Act 1, Scene 7 SCENE 7 The Air Force Laboratory at Fort George. Test tubes, vials, bunsen burners, a general clutter of chemical and electronic gadgets. In the middle of all this is DOCTOR VECTOR, sitting in a wheelchair, dressed in a white chemist's smock. He is very tiny and his entire body is twisted and bent. He wears extra thick dark glasses and elevator shoes and speaks with a weird shifting accent. When he wants to move his wheelchair he presses a button on one of the arms and the chair propels itself electronically.",
"author": "Shepard, Sam",
"title": "Operation Sidewinder",
"source": "Script. 1970",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1922,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "placeholder;need",
"secondary": "british",
"quote": "In fact, sir, you want an apparatus combining a variety of qualities, in a word, an absolutely silent, efficient, economical, invisible, corrosive proof, unornamented, not-too-heavily-springed, easily adjusted, readily removable, British-made, right-handed, patent automatic door closer, ideally fitted in every possible respect for attaching to your pantry door which (I understand you say) contains a glass window. How is that, sir?' 'Splendid, splendid.' 'Well, sir, I regret that there has never been any article of that description put on the market, but if you care to visit our wholesale department across the road, you may perhaps be able to make your choice from a reasonably large selection of our present imperfect models. Good day, sir.",
"author": "Graves, Robert",
"title": "The Fable of the Ideal Gadget.",
"source": "On English Poetry: Being an Irregular Approach to the Psychology of This Art, from Evidence Mainly Subjective. p. 110",
"notes": "A fable about how each poem is begun with an ideal to its perfection, edited countless times, until \"the inevitable sense of failure is felt, leaving him at liberty to try again.\"",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1936,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "placeholder;need",
"secondary": "british",
"quote": "A man once went into an ironmonger's shop and said hesitantly: 'Do you sell those gadgets for fixing on doors?' / 'Well, sir,' replied the assistant, 'I am not quite sure if I understand your requirements, but I take it you are needing a patent automatic door-closer?' / 'Exactly,' said the customer. 'One to fix on my pantry door which, by the way, contains a glass window.' / 'You will want a cheap one, sir?' / 'Cheap but serviceable.' / 'You will prefer an English make, sir?' / 'Indeed, that's a most important consideration.' / /You will perhaps want one with ornamentation, scroll work and roses, for instance?' / 'Oh, no, nothing of the sort, thank you. What I want is as plain and unobtrusive as possible.' / 'You would like it made of some rustless metal, sir?' / 'That would be very convenient.' / 'And with a strong spring?' / 'Well, moderately strong.' / 'To be fixed on which side, sir?' / /Let me see; the right-hand side.' / 'Now, sir,' said the assistant, 'I will go through each point, one by one. You want an efficient (but not too costly) English made, unobtrusive, rustless, unornamented, patent automatic door closer, to be fixed right-handed with a moderately strong spring to a pantry door with a gas window. Is there anything further, sir?' / 'Well, it's very good of you to help me like this,' said the customer. 'I should also like it easily adjusted and easily removable, and above all it must not squeak or need constant oiling.' / 'In fact,' said the clerk, 'you want an apparatus combining a variety of qualities, in a word, an absolutely silent, efficient, economical, invisible, corrosive-proof, unonramented, not-too-heavily-springed, easily adjustable, readily removable, British-made, right-handed, patent automatic door closer, ideally fitted in every possible respect for attaching your pantry door which (I understand you to say) contains a glass window. How is that sir?' / \"Splendid, splendid.' / 'Well, sir,' said the clerk, 'I regret that there has never been any article of that description put on the market, but if you care to visit our wholesale department across the road, you may perhaps be able to make your selection from a reasonably large assortment of our present imperfect models. Good day, sir.'\" (61-62) \"Well, that's the story of the ideal gadget. People like Mr. Brickell, Mr. Krutch and Mr. Villard are saddened by the fact that there are no ideally perfect, readily noble, spiritually supreme workers on the market upon whom they could put their faith to carry through a revolution which shall be quite as noble and as perfect as they themselves are. It is regrettable, but unavoidable, that the Communists must be compelled to carry through a revolution with the present assortment of workers who od not possess all those noble, idea qualities without which Mr. Brickell and Mr. Krutch do not see the possibilities of establishing a world which shall release men from the miseries and the exploitations which they now suffer.",
"author": "Gold, Michael",
"title": "The Fable of the Ideal Gadget",
"source": "Change the World! New York: International Publishers. 1936.",
"notes": "Gold was a columnist for the Daily Worker. His \"classic\" book was Jews Without Money. This is the same fable deployed by Robert Graves, but to a different end.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1947,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "placeholder;raygun",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "No gadget pleases Mrs. Ostraberg [fictional family of the future] more than her company table cloth, which looks like a fine piece of damask but can be wiped of like oil cloth, if anything spills. … \"Fred's work in running the shoe-store is a satisfactory 'creative outlet'; he is usually content after work to relax. The gadgets available for his relaxation are myriad, but he takes them less seriously than the Ostrabergs because to him they are relatively less important. / The Wilcoxes do not have fancy gadgets. But fish are biting in Georgia as in Indiana… In Georgia, of course, there are two races of people, white and black, and they do not always share the same sports or parks and playgrounds; but there is better provision for both races than there had been in 1940. Wilcox can already count a good many improvements which have come about in 20 years. Wilcox is a Negro.\"",
"author": "",
"title": "Life in 1960",
"source": "Kiplinger's Personal Finance. Nov 1947. p. 49.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1962,
"decade": 1960,
"primary": "placeholder;raygun",
"secondary": "space",
"quote": "This is Friendship Seven. Turned around, yawed 180 [degrees] to see the sunrise here, and also to see these little, these little gadgets here that I don't know what they are. … They do not seen, to be coming from the capsule at all. There are too many of them. They're all spread out all over the place; it looks like they're some of them might be miles away.",
"author": "Glenn, John",
"title": "",
"source": "From Mercury 6, Spoken on Feb. 20, 1962, 7:01 p.m. UTC",
"notes": "http://bit.ly/e9XsT5 ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1939,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "placeholder;tool",
"secondary": "lit",
"quote": "During the few months of delay required by Henry to get his factory force and his advertising force and his sales force organized, expectation and curiosity rose high. Nobody knew what the gadget was to be, except that it was rumored that it was to be extremely gadgetish. Henry, in the meantime, cleverly whetted the public curiosity by putting up along the most frequented monkey-paths in the jungle signs such as these: BRING SUNSHINE IN TO THE FAMILY NEXT / BUY A GADGET – AND IT DOES THE REST. A COCOANUT, A COCOANUT, A COCOANUT A DAY / WILL BUY YOUR WIFE A GADGET AND KEEP THE FROWNS AWAY.\" turns out to be a cocoanut opener: \"The Guenon Perfection Automatic Cocoanut Decapitator.\" \"It was so much more esthetic to have neatly decapitated cocoanuts, instead of the old kind that merely had their tops bashed in with a rock, that no self-respecting monkey-family dared serve any other kind. And besides that, the gadget was such fun to play with. Many a previously-industrious husband would stay at home half the morning fooling with the Decapitator when he ought to have been out picking cocoanuts for the support of his family.",
"author": "Ficke, Arthur Davison",
"title": "Fable of the Gadgets",
"source": "Coronet. v6n3. July, 1939. p. 29",
"notes": "story of \"Monkey Land\" where a monkey invents a gadget, which breaks the monotony of all the other monkey's lives. Has a small blackface image, w/ tophat and cigar in the header. Sets up a stock company to manufacture the gadgets, other monkeys buy in with coconuts. Becomes more trouble to maintain the gadget, which breaks easily, than to break it the old fashioned way with a rock. creates another delousing gadget, which upsets the social order. people get depressed, lack social contact, attack the factory in a luddite rage.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1949,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "placeholder;tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "He tried to sell insurance of a while after that… 'on commission' again. Unquote! Then he'd taken on some electric appliances and gadgets, house to house. But people didn't want gadgets. What's more, housewives got so sick of opening the door to real panhandlers they got so they wouldn't open them to anybody have the time.",
"author": "Lynde, H. H.",
"title": "The Slender Reed",
"source": " Crown Publishers: 1949.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1933,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "placeholder;tool;gauge",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The modern American prose in this volume has as its distinguishing mark a certain tone. This tone is a compound of freshness, vigor, sprightliness, and a kind of good-natured sophistication. Its style is easy, almost nonchalant; but under its smooth surface lies genuine techncial competence and sound writing craftsmanship. / The increasing popularity of this kind of writing is a tribute to its extraordinary effectivenes. Whether used for a narrative summary of a news event, or for the intricate analysis of a biographical study, its charm attracts and holds the reader. If we may predict, a command of its technique will become more an more necessary for the student who aspires to the pages of our better magazines or even to the columns of his college publications.\" … Elsie Gregory Macgill, \"What to Call an Airplane\": \"There are flying field terms galore for the airplane's structural parts. Gadget is the panacea of all errors. You can never go wrong with gadget, as it covers everything from the wings to the pilot's toothbrush. Other terms are more specific.\" (37) … section: PROCESSES, DEVICES, MECHANISMS. Morris Markey, \"The Prophets\": New Yorker interview with a meteorologist. \"We began with the barometer, because that was just beside his desk. Rather, let us say, five of them were beside his desk. They were no fancy optical-shop gadgets with enamelled dials and brass needles. They were simple tubes of mercury, two or three feet high, with scales affixed to them after the manner of a thermometer.\" (74) … section: CRITICISM. George F.T. Ryall. \"The Plymouth's Floating Power\": \"The car has free-wheeling, too, which may be turned on or off by a pull-gadget, under the dash, that looks like a large choke button\" (89). … section: THE SHORT STORY. John Chapin Mosher. \"Storm at Sea\": \"Everybody but himself was asleep on that boat, and the water was pouring in, quite soaking the sheets now. […] He slipped out of bed and stood in his bare feet. It was a fancy little gadget holding up the window. He couldn't do anything with it and a gust of rain blew in and sopped his pajamas.",
"author": "Galbraith, Robert Earle ed.",
"title": "These Our Moderns",
"source": "New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons. 1933.",
"notes": "Forword",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1902,
"decade": 1900,
"primary": "placeholder;vehicle",
"secondary": "british;lit",
"quote": "Directly under the car he lay and looked upward into pipes--petrol, steam, and water--with a keen and searching eye. / I telegraphed Mr. Pyecroft a question. / 'Not--in--the--least,' was the answer. 'Steam gadgets always take him that way. We had a bit of a riot at Parsley Green through his tryin' to show a traction-engine haulin' gipsy-wagons how to turn corners.\" […] \"'But, after all, it's your steamin' gadgets he's usin' for his libretto, as you might put it.\" Pyecroft to narrator about Hinch, who was formerly terrified, driving around the car. […] \"'But I will say for you, Hinch, you've certainly got the hang of her steamin' gadgets in quick time.' / He was driving very sweetly, but with a worried look in his eye and a tremor in his arm.",
"author": "Kipling, Rudyard",
"title": "Steam Tactics",
"source": "orig. 1902, first published in book form with Traffics and Discoveries, 1904",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1949,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "propername",
"secondary": "sf",
"quote": "",
"author": "Hubbard, L. Ron",
"title": "The Automagic Horse",
"source": "Astounding Science Fiction. vol. 44, no. 2. October, 1949. p. 77.",
"notes": "One character's name is Gadget. Hubbard's children's novel, about a mechanical horse named stardust.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1958,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "propername",
"secondary": "bomb",
"quote": "In this connection I do remember calling in 1944 a meeting of my cyclotron group at Los Alamos. The subject of the meeting was rather pretentiously announced as 'The Impact of the Gadget [the bomb] on Civilization.' The meeting was advertised to other groups at Los Alamos, and between 50 and 100 scientists attended. We discussed what the world might be like as a result of our endeavors.",
"author": "Wilson, Robert R.",
"title": "Books",
"source": "Scientific American 199, (December 1958). p. 145-155",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1972,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "propername",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "By this time, Gloriana, being young and basically healthy, had completely revived. She thanked us for our rescue efforts, and began prattling along enthusiastically about how much she was enjoying what she considered a great adventure, and how much she admired the woods, the mountains, the beautiful white snow, and the entire State of Vermont. Meanwhile, I was congratulating myself on this extraordinary piece of good luck. Monkeyface had not yet arrived to strike a sour note by arguing and objecting. So Gadget and I had a clear field to pour on the syrup. And we did a wonderful job. We agreed with everything Gloriana said. We suggested gently that we were all three of us a group of nature lovers, and that Monkeyface, although a bit gruff and tough on the outside, was inwardly more of a true nature lover than anybody.",
"author": "Birmingham, Frederic A.",
"title": "Voice of the '500'",
"source": "Saturday Evening Post. Summer 1972.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1902,
"decade": 1900,
"primary": "raygun",
"secondary": "nautical",
"quote": "Before I had time to question him as to his meaning, the old man emerged from the cabin loaded with sundry strange-looking machines, and followed by the steward bearing more. For a few minutes he was mighty busy placing his menagerie in order, and then he turned to me and said briskly, 'Now, Mr. Roper, I'm all ready, go forrard and invite the hands aft to the lecture.' […] The skipper was as busy as two people about his wheels and things, and the unhappy steward like an image of fear obeyed mechanically the various commands of his dread master. At last a whirring sound was heard like the humming of some huge imprisoned bee, and to this accompaniment the skipper took up his parable and preceded to talk. […] Indeed, from what I could see of their faces, I believe every other sense was merged in the full expectation of an explosion, and they couldn't have taken their strained eyes off the buzzing gadget in their midst for any consideration whatever.\" a monkey rushes the apparatus, something explodes, then: \"'Mr. Roper, I shan't give any more scientific exhibitions this trip; I think they're immoral.' With that he hobbled into his cabin, and we saw no more of him for a week. When we did, you couldn't have got a grain of science out of him with a small-tooth comb…",
"author": "Bullen, Frank T.",
"title": "Deep-Sea Plunderings",
"source": "New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1902. 138-9",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1953,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "raygun",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "When the impulses are few and the cortex is comparatively inactive, the brain wave slow down and normal sleep results. One is tempted by the picture of an electron beam scanning the tube face of a television camera, picking up impressions left by the outside world from one tiny region after another. But whether such beams of nerve impulses, playing upon the cortex, do actually control attention, whether they are responsible for the evocation of specific memory traces, only the future can decide. / We are beginning to have some reasonable guesses as to the 'gadgets' that would serve as a memory mechanism--guesses sufficiently concrete to permit testing by rigorous experimentation. I think it is realistic to hope for an understanding of memory precise enough to permit experimental modification of it in men.",
"author": "Gerard, Ralph W.",
"title": "What is Memory?",
"source": "Scientific American 189, (September 1953). p. 118-126",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1953,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "raygun",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "What it will be like to live and work in a space ship: the gadgets, the clothing, the new experiences in a gravitationless region where the happy voyager will have a magnet sewed into the seat of his pants to keep him from drifting away from his dinner. Miss Bendick makes it all moderately clear and faintly horrifying. For 10-to-14s.",
"author": "",
"title": "Children's Books",
"source": "Scientific American 189, (December 1953). p. 100-108 ",
"notes": "Review of The First Book of Space Travel, by Jeanne Bendick.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1962,
"decade": 1960,
"primary": "raygun",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The holdup killers, shooting up the town and spreading tack's on the road behind them to hinder pursuit, made, good their escape. As chance would have it, the South Braintree crime occurred at the precise moment when Chief Stewart, Pinkerton? agents and immigration' inspectors were turning up some curious angles that, Chief Stewart felt, might be related to the Bridgewater holdup - attempt. The Pinkertons had located an improbable witness who claimed to have invented a crime machine. One look into this unlikely gadget, according to, the inventor, would tell you just who committed any given crime. The Pinkertons, skeptical people, weren't very interested, in the crime machine, but they were decidedly interested in the gossip its' creator had' picked Up in the Italian, community. AcCOrding to this, the men involved in the Bridgewater holdup attempt had been Italian anarchists who had been living in a shack near, the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy.)",
"author": "Cook, Fred J. ",
"title": "Sacco-Vanzetti: The Missing Fingerprints",
"source": "The Nation, 22 December 1962. pp. 442-451",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1970,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "raygun",
"secondary": "sf",
"quote": "All right. The punk's opened the cubicle a crack, looking like he's about to pass out while he's doing it. This bearded guy, Eltak, stands in front of the cubicle, holding the gadget he controls the thing with.... '' '' Where's the gadget now? ''Quillan asked. \" Marras Cooms's got it. \" \" How does it work? \" Baldy shook his head. \" We can't figure it out. It's got all kinds of little knobs and dials on it. Push this one an' it squeaks, turn that one an' it buzzes. Like that. \" Quillan nodded. \" All right. What happened? \" \" Well, Movaine tells the old guy to go ahead an ' do the demonstrating. The old guy sort of grins and fiddles with the gadget. The rest cubicle door pops open an' this thing comes pouring out.I never seen nothin' like it! It's like a barn door with dirty fur on it. It swirls up an' around an' -- my God! -- it wraps its upper end clean around…",
"author": "Schmitz, James H.",
"title": "A Pride of Monsters",
"source": "Macmillan, 1970",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1970,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "raygun",
"secondary": "sf",
"quote": "Well, \" Quillan said after a pause, \" in a way, Movaine got his demonstration. The Hlats can move through solid matter and carry other objects along with them, as advertised. If Yaco can work out how it's done and build a gadget that does the same thing, they're getting the Hlats cheap. What happened then? \" \" I told Marras Cooms about Movaine, and he sent me and a half-dozen other boys back up here with riot guns to see what we could do for him. Which was nothin',[…]",
"author": "Schmitz, James H.",
"title": "A Pride of Monsters",
"source": "Macmillan, 1970",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1971,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "raygun",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "To understand it we must first realize that we are going to make very little real progress in solving the problem of pollution until we recognize it for what, primarily, it is: an economic problem which must he understood in economic terms. Of course, there are noneconomic aspects of pollution, as there are with all economic problems, but all too often, such secondary matters dominate discussion. Engineers, for example, are certain that pollution will vanish once they find the magic gadget or power source. Politicians keep trying to find the right kind of bureaucracy: and bureaucrats maintain an unending search for the correct set of rules and regulations. Those who are above such vulgar pursuits pin their hopes on a moral regeneration or social revolution, apparently in the belief that saints and socialists have no garbage to dispose of.",
"author": "Ruff, Larry",
"title": "The Economic Common Sense of Pollution",
"source": "Saturday Evening Post. Summer 1971 (243:1). pp. 74-155. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1972,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "raygun",
"secondary": "sf",
"quote": "His ring key unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk and he took out a small electronic device with controls and an extendible aerial on top. \" Well look at that! \" I said when he pulled out the aerial. Ile didn't answer me, just shot a long look at me from under his eyebrows, and went back to adjusting the thing. Only when it was turned on and the green light glowed on the top did he relax a bit. \" You know what this is? \" he asked, pointing at the gadget. \" Of course, \" I said. \" But not from seeing them on Freibur. They aren't that common. \" \" They aren't common at all, \" he mumbled, staring at the green light which glowed steadily. \" As far as I know this is the only one on the planet -- so I wish you wouldn't mention it to anybody. Anybody, \" he repeated with emphasis. \" Not my business, \" I told him with disarming lack of interest.",
"author": "Harrison, Harry",
"title": "The Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat",
"source": " Garden City, New York: Nelson Doubleday, Inc. 1972.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1972,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "raygun",
"secondary": "sf",
"quote": "We do the serotonin diffraction in here. This room's plasma research; remind me to bring you back sometime when the big centrifuge is running. Fascinating stuff. This is Klaus's enzyme lab -- I'd take you in, but he's such a touchy bastard that there's no sense provoking him needlessly -- and down here... \" Harker puffed along behind the lab director, dazzled by the array of formidable and incomprehensible gadgetry, bewildered by the flow of unfamiliar terminology. He smiled a lot and tried to look as if he followed at least the rudiments. But he doubted that he was deceiving Raymond. He saw kennels where lively dogs bounded joyfully up and down and struggled to lick his hands through the cage; it was a little jarring to learn that every dog in the room had been dead at least once, from periods ranging from a few minutes to twenty-eight hours.",
"author": "Silverberg, Robert",
"title": "Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1972.",
"source": "",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1974,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "raygun",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Subterrene is one of the more successful LASL programs, modest in cost and highly visible, a gadget that fulfills every little Leonardo's dream and is practical as well. What a Subterrene can do is drill holes with its superhot \" penetrator \" in almost any kind of rock or soil and line them with their own \" glass \" pipes. The holes can be drilled vertically or horizontally or at any angle between, more practically and at less cost than most conventional holes, because the Subterrene turns the material that fills the hole into lava, which can then be extracted in several different forms.",
"author": "Rhodes, Richard",
"title": "Los Alamos Revisited",
"source": "Harpers. March 1973. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1975,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "raygun",
"secondary": "lit",
"quote": "M-m-m, well, it varies. With thousands of shipping outfits plying these lanes, we can expect several craft per year to stop by, though we never know in advance. However, what we do know is if anybody's within thirty -- forty kilometers. A little gadget that detects thoughts. So you can't monitor us unbeknownst. We can warn off ships; they do radio us from orbit before landing. Chances are they'd come down anyway, but maintain camouflage. All you'd observe or photograph would be a colored blur like ordinary ball lightning.",
"author": "Woiwode, Larry",
"title": "Beyond the Bedroom Wall",
"source": "",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1958,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "raygun;instrument",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "In such an exercise the experimenter is allowed an \"ideal workshop\" in which he can make any kind of instrument or gadget-provided that its design and functioning do not contradict basic laws of physics. For example, he can have a rocket that moves with almost the speed of light, but not more than the speed of light; or he may use a light source which emits just a single photon, but not half a photon.",
"author": "Gamow, George",
"title": "The Principle of Uncertainty",
"source": " Scientific American 198, (January 1958). p. 51-57",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1967,
"decade": 1960,
"primary": "raygun;instrument",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Smoluchowski's point can be better appreciated by translating it into modern terms. Although he refers to recent progress in electronics, ideas such as the rectification of an alternating voltage had barely arisen in his time. Today the principle of rectification plays a major role in such solid-state electronic devices as diodes and transistors. These devices are analogous to the hypothetical gadgets that translate the up-and-down movement of a Brownian particle into a purely upward motion, or that perform the old demon's trick of permitting only fast molecules to go from left to right.",
"author": "Ehrenberg, W.",
"title": "Maxwell's Demon",
"source": "Scientific American 217, (November 1967). p. 103-110",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1908,
"decade": 1900,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "nautical;definition",
"quote": "Mr. Caffin smiled, stroking his sandy 'gadget,' so called by his friends as 'a nameless, improvised thing.' 'You're a machine at all the old tricks. But when it comes to modern initiative--God knows, you must jack up those men yourself. I'm close, but you're their skin.",
"author": "Saint-Gaudens, Homer",
"title": "Man the Machine",
"source": "The Metropolitan Magazine. v.27n6. March, 1908",
"notes": " Almost nonsensical, even in context… attempting sailor dialect",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1908,
"decade": 1900,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "nautical",
"quote": "I'd like to have a ten-minute session with the bow-legged tailor that put the latest gadget stitch on those trousers.",
"author": "Dermody, D.E.",
"title": "The Key to the Bull's Eyes: A Story of the Fleet",
"source": "The Pacific Monthly [a magazine on Oregon]. v19n6. June 1908",
"notes": "a commander reprimanding his crew for having non-regulation uniforms, having made modifications",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1910,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "nautical",
"quote": "Further, at Cape Evans there had been running for more than three months a scientific station, which rivaled in thoroughness and exactitude any other such station in the world. I hope that later a more detailed account may be given of this continuous series of observations, some of them demanding the most complex mechanism, and all of the watched over by enthusiastic experts. It must here suffice to say that we who on our return saw for the first time the hut and its annexes completely equipped were amazed; though perhaps the gadget which appealed most to us at first was the electric apparatus by which the cook, whose invention it was, controlled the rising of his excellent bread.",
"author": "Cherry-Garrard, Aspley",
"title": "The Worst Journey in the World",
"source": "Bremen: Salzwasser Verlag",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1917,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "british",
"quote": "On the way across o he hangars discovered two R.F.C. men lying on the ground trying to look like a mole-hill, and fidgeting with a gadget resembling an intoxicated lawn-mower, the use of which I have not yet discovered.",
"author": "Hutcheon, L.F.",
"title": "War Flying: By A Pilot. The Letters of 'Theta' to His Home People Written in Training and in War",
"source": "Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1917",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1920,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "nautical",
"quote": "Stick them on that shelf,' said Jude. 'Oh, Lord!--butter-fingers!--lemme! That's the gadget to keep them from shiftin' if the ship rolls. Now stick the knives in that locker. You don't mind my tellin' you, do you?",
"author": "Stacpoole, Henry De Vere",
"title": "Satan: A Romance of the Bahamas",
"source": "p. 47",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1920,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "I've got the stuff wired up, Luke,' he said, 'and the whole gadget timed according to instructions; but hte detonators have to be fixed yet. It's not a show that wants monkeying with until its [sic] needed. […] If the game looks in the least like being blown upon, this gadget of yours wipes out the barge and all evidence that can speak or bear witness.",
"author": "Goodwin, John",
"title": "Without Mercy",
"source": "New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. 1920",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1921,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Lately I have devised more sightly and lighter arrangements for protecting the nails. One useful gadget is to pull over each nail a short piece of black indiarubber tubing of suitable diameter. This affords good protection. Another contrivance I have used is a small metal clip to pinch round the nail, and this is very effective.",
"author": "Livcsey, G.H.",
"title": "Common Nervous Diseases of the Dog",
"source": "Veterinary Medicine. v16n10. October, 1921.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1921,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "But I want you to smash 'em through the ice,' went on Bret. 'And I think we can rig a gadget that will do it. If the donkey-crane isn't high enough--how about using a Jim-pole to lift the logs up and chuck them into the river, instead of hauling them out on the bank?' […] 'Chuck 'em out on the ice from a Jim-pole sling, twenty feet high, and it will smash the ice up, won't it?' 'I'll say so--if we can rig the gadget.'",
"author": "Perry, Clay",
"title": "Roving River",
"source": "Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company. 1921. p. 72-3",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1924,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "A Handy Gadget for the Magazine Subscriber. How do you remove the wrappers from tightly rolled newspapers or magazines? […] The problem has been solved by a cutter devised by Arthur F. Hoffman, a rural mail carrier at Harvard, Neb., recently submitted to the Post Office Department and approved by the Postal authorities. The cutter is in the form of a knife with a curved and flattened tip. The flat point is easily inserted underneath the wrapper and a forward movement of the instrument results in clean cutting of the covering without damage to the contents.",
"author": "",
"title": "Inventions New and Interesting",
"source": "Scientific American 130, (June 1924), p. 405-409 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1928,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "On the Memphis, coming back from Paris, Slim [LIndbergh's nickname] rigged up a gadget to work a shower bath from the outside. He tried it first on a newspaperman who, fully clothed and expecting to get a 'human interest' item out of the 'invention' Slim asked him to inspect, stepped under the shower and got literally 'all wet' when Lindbergh pulled the string.",
"author": "",
"title": "Lindbergh--How He Does It; An Amazing Revelation",
"source": "Popular Science Monthly, April, 1928. p. 14",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1930,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "patent",
"quote": "But women are becoming more practical, and they have the advantage over men of knowing what is wanted in the sphere of domestic inventions. Every housewife is an inventor, because almost day of her life, she is making something new or devising some gadget.",
"author": "",
"title": "The 'Brain Wave' Room",
"source": "Popular Mechanics, April 1930. p. 578",
"notes": "Story that questions whether pace of invention and patents will cease. Focuses on the woman inventor. Followed by a list of household inventions people want.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1930,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "What my wife wanted was a place to hang brooms and mops, so I made the automatic holder illustrated, tested it, and triumphantly called her to behold a gadget that really works.",
"author": "",
"title": "Automatic Holder Grips Broom Handles",
"source": "Popular Science, May 1930. p. 114",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1932,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "now Mr. Graves is in again with something else-a new telescope with an 8 1/2-inch Pyrex mirror, on a Springfield mounting and a pedestal made of 6-inch pipe fittings, and driven by a Dictophone motor. He has also constructed a dingbat for making the knife-edge test. This, he admits, is against the rules of the game (ATM page 97) but says he made it, anyway, just for fun.",
"author": "Ingalls, Albert G.",
"title": "The Amateur Astronomer",
"source": " Scientific American 146, (May 1932). p. 296-315 ",
"notes": " photo caption: \"Graves' gadget.\"",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1934,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Pliers, a file, and a pile of wire coat hangers are the only equipment and materials required for making a variety of wire articles useful in the home. For purposes in which rustproof qualities are important, gadgets can be constructed from galvanized hangers.",
"author": "",
"title": "Useful Articles Made from Coat Hangers",
"source": "Popular Science. Sept 1934",
"notes": "In the very same issue as the ad distancing its product from gadgetry",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1934,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "A bit of fine copper wire can be used through the eye of the needle, in order to hold a hair, and this hair, secured by wax or glue, is adjusted to focus. The gummed paper wrapped around the objective serves as a needle holder. A needle serves to hold a hair in position below the objective's focus. This gadget can be adjusted easily to the center of the micro­scope field.",
"author": "Niblack, Ken G.",
"title": "The Amateur and his Microscope--XIII Plants that Swim",
"source": "Scientific American 151, (December 1934) p. 304-305 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1935,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Simple, Efficient, Durable … Materials Cost One dollar … Wooden Frame … Chamois Skin Bellows … A Few Other Gadgets and an Evening or Two of Time.",
"author": "Kennedy, John",
"title": "Making Your Own Photomicographic Camera",
"source": "Scientific American 152, (February 1935). p. 76-78",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1935,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "This pamphlet includes a description of a needle (smaller than the one to be described here) and an outline of the conditions under which the test shall be conducted. It does not describe any machine. That is left to the ingenuity of the inventor. The responsibility for the design of the machine shown on the present page must rest with me. The credit for making a really workmanlike gadget of it is due to Mr. Frank Wanderer, a member of our local A.T.M. association.",
"author": "Ingalls, Albert G.",
"title": "The Amateur Telescope Maker",
"source": "Scientific American 153, (October 1935). p. 200-216",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1936,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "But that was just the beginning. Gadget upon gadget blossomed forth and went into immediate use. A kitchen rack arose, with hooks for pots and pans and space for plates and eating utensils. A 'cup tree' spread out its arms. Over in that corner (I am pointing SW now) we dug an underground refrigerator. And in the other direction was the covered garbage hole and the grease trap, which consisted of a small pit with a wicker cover. On the cover we piled a couple of handfulls of dry grass to absorb the grease from the messy water poured through it. The grass we renewed daily, burning the old lot. […] All this was the work of the first couple of days in camp, but the gadget idea went on. We moved forward under the battle cry, 'Let's have another gadget!' and the further result was a camp broom, fire tongs, rustic broilers, a hot-plate holder, pot hooks, a serving table, shoe racks, a bulletin board, and even a primitive mail box before the ten days were up. […] How many of that type of gadget shall we be seeing in your camp this summer?",
"author": "",
"title": "Hiking with Green Bar Bill",
"source": "Boys' Life. Aug 1936, p. 20",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1937,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "definition",
"quote": "This book is the work of many authors. No one person could ever think up half the things it contains. It came out of the sweat and toil and practical experience of hundreds of enthusiastic photographers whose nimble wits have devised thse clever mechanical means for overcoming some of their many difficulties that stand between them and the attainment of their goal. … Photography is a many-sided hobby. Among other diversions, it provides those of its devotees who like to tinker with tools a never ending incentive to make devices for which they have immediate and very practical use. They ahve the fun of making things whose utility amply justifies the time and inexpensive materials required. … It is not the purpose of most of these ingenious gadgets to take trade away from the photographic manufacturer. Commercial products cannot usually be duplicated in the home workshop at anything like the cost of the manufactured article. But here are many items not regularly marketed. They would probably not have sufficient sale to warrant their manufacture, although many of them will prove invaluable to workers faced with problems similar to those of the writers. We are confident that no one seriously engaged in photography, especially under makeshift conditions in the home where so much enthusiastic work is done, can fail to find in this book many hints which will save him not only an appreciable amount of time and money, but also much vexation of spirit.",
"author": "Fraprie, Frank R. and Franklin I. Jordan",
"title": "",
"source": "Photographic Hints & Gadgets. Boston: American Photographic Publishing Co. 1937.",
"notes": "In the foreword to this instruction manual of photographic techniques and rigs, the authors tangentially define gadgetry, as well as explain why these gadgets are of no threat to photographic manufacturers -- goes toward why the gadget is often in this period set apart from mass produced, manufactured consumer goods (before this date as well, in the magazines, and for how long before the 'handy' sense of electronic gadgets? How long could this kind of gadgetry be a viable technological category, as circuits and materials became more and more complex? Categories of the book include cases and outfits, minature cameras, aerial cameras, adapters, tripods, lens shades, optics, exposure, focusing, synchronizers, light controls, lights, darkrooms, darkroom helps, film development, temperature control, timers, chemistry, washers, drying, negatives, retouching, printers, enlargers, easels, reducing, trimming, mounting, color, copying, micro, table top, nature, miscellaneous.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1937,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Twin Pocket Trouble Shooter Gadgets, devised by Alfred A. Ghirardi, are two novel compilations of data for the radio trouble shooter, covering both home and automobile radio sets. These gadgets are fully described in a circular which many be had by writing for Bulletin G35, Radio & Technical Publishing Co., 45 Astor Place, New York City.--Gratis.",
"author": "",
"title": "Current Bulletin Briefs",
"source": "Scientific American 157, (October 1937). p. 251",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1937,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "How to Make Electric Toys. By Raymond F. Yates. Presents the fundamentals of electricity and how to make a wide variety of toys and gadgets run by electricity.",
"author": "Rhine, J.B.",
"title": "Books Selected by the Editors",
"source": "Scientific American 157, (December 1937). p. 382-383",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1938,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "love",
"quote": "Some firebugs go in for complicated gadgets involving wires, springs, and time fuses. But such ingenuity usually brings the gadgeteer to grief; nine out of ten times these infernal machines do not quite work. […] The simplest of all gadgets is the common candle which burns at the rate of an inch an hour.",
"author": "Robinson, Henry Morton",
"title": "Science Catches the Arsonist",
"source": " The Rotarian. Mar 1938.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1938,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "list",
"quote": "How to Make Electric Toys, by Raymond F. Yates. Youngsters old and young will find in this 200-page book a wealth of information about how to make simple little electrical gadgets that will afford hours of pleasure. Secret magnetic locks, experiments with coils, an electric alarm, an electric chair for bugs, magic magnetic boats, a shocking coil, and a dozen or so other equally interesting gadgets are described.",
"author": "",
"title": "Books Selected by the Editors",
"source": "Scientific American 158, (February 1938). p. 126-127",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1938,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Odds and ends of cardboard for mounts and other purposes are conveniently stored in the illustrated gadget. Its construction is simplicity itself and is evident from the illustration; two strips of wood at the back and one at the front, although more may be used if required. The device is suspended from the molding with two ordinary picture hooks. Another use for the device is the storage of large photographic blotters.",
"author": "Deschin, Jacob",
"title": "Camera Angles",
"source": "Scientific American 159, (December 1938). p. 322-331",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1939,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "By inventing tricky gadgets and offering novel, needed services, thousands of plucky youth now are job makers--not job seekers.",
"author": "Davis, Maxine",
"title": "Think Your Way to a Job",
"source": "The Rotarian. Oct 1939.",
"notes": "Part of the National Youth Administration for Illinois's Job Creation Contest. \"Think your way to a job.\"",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1940,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "When closed, this household gadget holds a regular slice of bread so it may be sliced in two with a sharp knife for Melba toast.",
"author": "",
"title": "Keeping the Home Shipshape",
"source": "Popular Science. July 1940. p. 154 ",
"notes": "with annotations of materials used and lengths",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1940,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "I find that the time can be relied on well within one minute. The glass flask was resorted to in order to protect all essential parts from the birds, who seemed to feel that I had made a gadget for their special benefit. The neck of the flask and a part of the sphere were removed with a 'biscuit cutter' (simply a cylinder of sheet metal) and abrasive. The plate of the clock, having nearly twice the radius of the sphere, was spun to its required curvature. All the machining was done on a wood-working lathe and drill press in the pattern shop here at The California Institute of Technology. Figure 5 is a photograph of an­ other spherical globe sun-clock made earlier and partly similar. […] The clock to be described is about my tenth design and its performance has been so satisfactory that I have decided to call it quits and turn the information over to those who may wish to have a gadget in their gardens demonstrating an interesting problem in celestial mechanics.",
"author": "Deschlin, Jacob",
"title": "Telescoptics",
"source": "Scientific American 163, (July 1940). p. 36-40",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1940,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Woodcraft. By Bernard S. Mason. A comprehensive book on woodcraft. Trail shelters, teepees, bark shelters, beds, duffel, fire-craft, campfire gadgets, axmanship, caches, barkcraft, woodcraft rope and cordage, woodcraft knick-knacks, woodsy furniture and camp fixings, calumets, rawhide, buckskin, horn, feathers, gourds, tin-can-craft, totem poles--these indicate the scope, which is braider than in similar books. The emphasis is heavily on Indian lore and on the practical: how to do and make.",
"author": "",
"title": "Our Book Corner",
"source": "Scientific American 163, (October 1940). p. 231-233 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1941,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "William Buchele, 2832 Sagamore Road, Toledo, 0., sends us the photo­ graphs shown in Figure 4 and says: \"This is a gadget for testing at the focus with a fiat. Light source is a lOO-watt projection lamp. Its housing has cooling flanges to prevent the lamp from overheating. A thin silvered diagonal reflects light through a hole in the fiat, it returns from the glass under test, and passes through the diagonal, thus permitting the light source and the eye to be in the same train simultaneously. The gadget has a micrometer screw feed. The dark upright strip in the center is a graduated system of fine and coarse pinholes and slits. There is also an eyepiece, knife-edge and Ronchi grating holder, with lateral rack and pinion feed.\"",
"author": "Ingalls, Albert G.",
"title": "Telescoptics",
"source": "Scientific American 165, (August 1941). p. 106-108",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1941,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "matic;time",
"quote": "It's a lot of fun, as any amateur telescope maker will tell you, to invent, design, and then build gadgets to save labor, even if the actual labor saving is minus quantity. You get your pay when you can step aside and watch them function automatically, with a self-satisfied grin on your face. Who cares about time, anyway. / Top-flight position as Public Gadgeteer No. 1 undoubtedly has now been won by Kenneth Richter, 33 Clarence Ave., Bridgewater, Mass, whose star camera works while he sleeps. It is in storage just now, as Richter is away at Harvard and in summer is running a \"Chromocinemataudiographic Expedition, Ltd.' (possibly 'limited' refers to the funds) somewhere between hudson Bay and the N. Pole. Nevertheless we invited him to remove the bushel from off its light, so the rest of us could see its glimmer. / \"The desire for the instrument was born of the fact that we have but two seasons in Bridgewater-the cold sea­ son and the mosquito season, and both are too uncomfortable for visual guiding of an astronomical camera. There­fore, about a year's work was spent overcoming the discomfort of attend­ ing the camera throughout the night­ the exposure is made automatically. / At about dark, I go out, lift the cover off the instrument, and pull out the plate holder slide against a stop. Next, I go in and set a clock by my bedside for the time I want the exposure to start, also for the length of time it is to run. Then I work on a mirror, take the girl friend to a movie (though building the thing kept me so broke that this is just wishful thinking) or I go to bed. / At, say, 2 A.M., the clock turns on the power. Outside, the camera springs to life. A small motor swings the flap shutter open, and an electro­ magnet holds it thereafter when the small motor has shut itself off by breaking its own circuit just as the shutter strikes the magnet. The latter is energized by a radio 'A' eliminator, to avoid the vibration of the camera that would result from the use of an A.C. magnet. This is a satis­ factory source of 6-v., D.C., well filtered. Meanwhile a synchronous motor drive, using one of the hen's-teeth 4-watt Warren motors, has started to apply the diurnal motion. […] While almost all the gadgets are simple enough to be foolproof in operation, the drive frequently messes up the work. Other than that, one might say that it saves me probably 2 hours' work a week. The number of hours required to build the machine would, of course, swallow up this saving for several years. However, I don't even try to justify it as a net, over-all time saver. It isn't.",
"author": "Ingalls, Albert G.",
"title": "Telescoptics",
"source": "Scientific American 165, (September 1941). p. 170-172",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1942,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Today's high and fast flying pilots will take up stamp collecting, gadget making, or the study of foreign languages if they listen to the advice of May Clinic's Dr. M.N. Walsh.",
"author": "",
"title": "Telescope Making? Doctor Urges Pilot to Take Up Hobbies",
"source": " Science Service. Scientific American 166, (March 1942). p. 146-148 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1943,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "\"These are the preliminary adjustments. When these are complete, I should start collimating from both ends, and meet in the middle. Insert the main mirror and line up so that the optical axis coincides with the cross-wires. Insert accurate cross-wires at the inner end of the declina­tion axis (c, Figure 1). A cap should be provided for the eyepiece adapter tube, with a small hole in the exact center. Such a cap can easily be made of tin, and is a very useful gadget.\" […] Again, all this is largely of general interest, alone, to the average amateur, because the necessary furnace is seldom available. Gemmill states that homemade blower could be rigged up with an oil burner and some sort of retort. Again we have the intangible factor of fun pottering with gadgets, and when some too practical-minded critic comes along to remark, 'Does it pay?' you say 'No,'--and go on pottering, leaving him shaking his head. He will never understand the mainsprings of the experimental urge.\"",
"author": "Ingalls, Albert G.",
"title": "Telescoptics",
"source": "Scientific American 168, (June 1943) p. 284-286",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1945,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "retro",
"quote": "What makes you think all the intricate gadgets and ingenious devices in your home are something new? Though he didn't have electricity, great-grandfather outfitted his house with the same kind of labor savers. Those shown here are from the collection of Bartlett Hayes, displayed at the Phillips Addison Gallery in Andover, Mass., and at the museum of the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence.",
"author": "",
"title": "Great-Grandpa Liked Gadgets Too: Tricky Household Devices of the 1800s Display a Wealth of Homespun Ingenuity",
"source": "Popular Science, Jan 1945.",
"notes": "img. http://bit.ly/cWtsBe ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1945,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "\"And that's where this gadget business comes in.\" \"Maybe you have a number of your own pet gadget ideas which may be converted into checks this week. There are several pointers I can give you as to the nature of what the publications are accepting now. Of course all gadgets calling for…\" \"However, the dime stores, hardware stores and notion stores are literally filled with gadget items which had their origin in quarter page write-ups with pen and ink illustrations, later ot be seen by some manufacturer and adopted in his regular line or put on the market as a new item.\" \"Another lock stunt was included in the lot -- (7) a bar of wood which fits over the cooking stove gas knobs so that junior could not turn on the gas when dad was in the front room buried in Dick Tracy. The final gadget idea of the group was (8) a rubber ball impinged over the valve of the radiator so that spouting steam would not ruin the wallpaper…\" (21)",
"author": "",
"title": "",
"source": "The Writer. vol. 58",
"notes": "Converting a \"gadget idea\" into straight money--selling the idea to a magazine, who publishes it, where it is seen by manufacturers. ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1947,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "list",
"quote": "America's thousands of backyard- and basement-workshop gadgeteers have now had a full two years out from under wartime restrictions. They have made good use of their time, as the pictures on this and the following page show. The nation is being deluged with a profusion of gadgets the like of which has never before been seen. To the most mechanically minded country on earth this gadget deluge is good, clean and long-overdue fun.",
"author": "",
"title": "Gadgets: Two Years of Peace Produce Some Strange and Wonderful Inventions",
"source": "LIFE. Dec 15, 1947.",
"notes": "After two years of peace time, backyard tinkerers have time to rekindle their ingenuity. The article stresses modularity and collapsibility -- a \"superstroller\" frame that becomes a golf cart, wheelbarrow, car seat, and high chair. Then surveys \"Gadgets for Automobiles\" (two-passenger tent mounted on roof of car, w/ air mattress, collapsible canvas trailer that fits in trunk, three-wheeled motor scooter that fits under the sink), \"Gadgets for the Household\" (the mannikinaire inflatable dress hanger torso, complete prefab bathroom), \"Gadgets for the Outdoors\" (inflatable puddle, leaf sweeper/lawnmower/snowplow). img http://bit.ly/9xw0tb",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1948,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "I can model a gadget in clay and call in a draftsman and explain to him just what I need.'\" \"When he has a gadget--his own word for the machines and tools he invents--worked out in his mind, he calls in a draftsman and his thin, half-paralyzed hands pick up the modeling clay.",
"author": "",
"title": "We'll Ship Them Right Out': C.B. Vickers Doesn't Give Excuses--Though He Could Cite A Long List If He Weren't the Man He Is",
"source": "The Rotarian. Feb 1948. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1951,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The 'Tyron' is the result. It looks like a small grease gun, and it fixes punctures by injecting a liquid sealer into the hole. Just pull out the nail, insert the gadget, give it a few quick turns, and the tire and tube are sealed.",
"author": "",
"title": "Kept His Eyes Open, Saw His Chance: Onetime Kansas farmer invents tire-repair gadget and does fine.",
"source": "Changing Times: The Kiplinger Magazine. Oct 1951. p. 14.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1951,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "\"At the center of gravity of my gadget I put a nut in the baseboard to fit a standard camera tripod screw. Thus, by using a pan head on the tripod I have an equatorial mounting which facilitates pointing the gadget at the sun as the sun moves. This really helps. / \"To line up the gadget, move the tar­ get until the diameter of the solar image is single and a minimum. It is well to cover either hole in the mask separately, examining the image with a low-power magnifier to note whether it is circular and whether it has a flare on one side caused by lack of squareness in the posi­tion of the target or the lens. Clamp the binocular hinge to its support, point the gadget at the sun, and observe the images.\"",
"author": "Ingalls, Albert G.",
"title": "The Amateur Astronomer",
"source": "Scientific American 185, (October 1951). p. 81-83 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1952,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "",
"author": "Warring, Ronald Horace",
"title": "200 Ingenious Motoring Gadgets: A Book of Easily-Made Gadgets and Devices for Improving All Cars, Simplifying their Maintenance, and Reducing Repair Costs With Classified Index",
"source": "Postlib Publications. 1952. 122pp",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "include title in source?"
},
{
"year": 1953,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "american",
"quote": "Problem––Gadget––Solution!\" \"We hope you enjoy this display of gadgets. They were developed by workers who wanted to attain better efficiency or greater safety on their jobs. Perhaps you have a gadget that would be interesting to your own company. If so, your management may be willing to consider its possible inclusion in this show so others may share its benefits.\" \"Mechanical ingenuity is typical of the American worker. From the cotton gin to the can opener he has used his inventiveness to create devices that do things more efficiently, more easily, more safely or at lower cost. / In an effort to further simulate such ingenuity, and also to assist in the exchange of ideas of this type, we are presenting this collection of 'gadgets.' / For the most part, they are not commercially available but have been made up by the machine shops of the plants involved. A few however have been in such demand that independent manufacturers were requested to produce and market them. / The Du Pont Chambers Works Safety Section and the Du Pont Wilmington Safety and Fire Protection Division were instrumental in making this collection possible.\" ",
"author": "",
"title": "Gadgets",
"source": "Wilmington, Delaware: Petroleum Chemicals Division, E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Company. 1953",
"notes": "Cover. An inter-departmental venture within DuPont, to share ingenuous gadget ideas that increase productivity or safety, that have been thought up by individuals. Evenly spreading and capitalizing on the gadget-ingenuity of workers across the company, rather than a series of top down management, organizational programs for running the company. includes: step-ladder supports, 'paint brush saver' nylon cord tying brush to belt so it won't hit the ground if dropped, device for moving spools of wire, wire rope storage arrangement, to the more complexly engineered drum sling/lift, electrical service truck, etc. ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1956,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Farmers who have turned inventors to concoct ingenious machines get a chance to exhibit their creations at the annual Farm Gadget Show of the Iowa State Fair. … Sixteen-year-old Marvin Negley copped a prize for his drill press made from the rear-axle assembly of a junked car he found on his father's farm.",
"author": "McCafferty, Phil",
"title": "Keynote of the Farm Gadget Show: 'I Just Built it Because I Needed It'",
"source": "Popular Mechanics. Aug 1956.",
"notes": "PIC http://bit.ly/cqdMeW",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1956,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Safety is one park aspect which can never be overdone, for the fight against accident causes is a continuing one. Steeplechase, being quite an old operation, got started on its safety campaign many years ago. … Many operators have come up with gadgets to prevent ride mishaps and I will outline some of ours, first telling a Class A example of one which paid for itself nicely. … The gadget used here is the same in principal that we use on other rides. That is, a three-inch pipe protrudes next to each wheel, so that if an axle breaks or a wheel is thrown, the car body merely settles a couple of inches onto the pipe, instead of falling thru to the ground.",
"author": "Onorato, Jimmy",
"title": "Peace of Mind, Protection In Improvised Safety Gadgets",
"source": "Billboard. May 26, 1956.",
"notes": "Just adding bars and handrails, really.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1968,
"decade": 1960,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "retro",
"quote": "He functioned at one time or another, and often simultaneously, as political theorist, diplomat, engineer, inventor of gadgets and house historian for German princely families",
"author": "Kreiling, Frederick C.",
"title": "Leibniz",
"source": "Scientific American 218, (May 1968). p. 94-100 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1976,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "rig",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "However, the third Alexander Calder demonstrated from his childhood an adventuresomeness and ingenuity that clearly marked him as no mere follower, even of his talented forebears. Growing up in Arizona, California and New York, young ''Sandy' Calder tirelessly crafted playthings and other gadgets out of wire, wood and nails. In 1919 he graduated as an engineer from the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., then set out on an eccentric progression of technical jobs. As a boilerman on a passenger liner, he devised a contraption to direct sea breezes into the stifling engine room.",
"author": "",
"title": "Calder: The Mobile Stops",
"source": "Time Magazine. 22 November 1976",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1949,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "rig;handy",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Haufe built his gadget from odds and ends of telephone and radio equipment and war-surplus materials. The game is played on the conventional field of nine squares formed by two…\" [And yet, two pages earlier] \"X-Rays help only a little in spotting gallstones, since most are transparent to X-rays. But a new electronic gadget has come to the rescue of anxious surgeons. The instrument, called a cholelithophone, has a thin, flexible probe which the surgeon inserts in narrow ducts.",
"author": "",
"title": "",
"source": "Newsweek vol. 34. Issues 1-13. p. 52",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1927,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "rig;instrument",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "A College Professor Solves a Mathematical Problem and Becomes a Wealthy Inventor. Most of us are likely to think of an inventor as eagerly seeking some idea upon which to exercise his genius, and then bending over a work bench surrounded with wheels, wires and miscellaneous gadgets trying first this combination and then that until he works out his invention. / He gets his patent and makes the rounds of manu­facturers, all save one of whom laugh at his radical ideas, but that one sees something in it and makes a fortune. / The other day we were talking with an inventor who is not like that at all. He never thought of himself as an inventor, never looked for anything to invent, never had any intention of making a lot of money, believes he is weak in imagination-that quality so often considered necessary to success­ful invention-has put in far more time writing a book than he has done in inventing, has done his in­ venting only as a sort of side line and never bothered ped­dling an invention around among manufacturers. All the inventing he does is with a pen and a note book. And yet Louis Alan Hazeltine has made a fortune out of his inventions. The best known of them, of course, is the Neu­trodyne radio receiver.",
"author": "Wright, Milton",
"title": "Successful Inventors---X",
"source": "Scientific American 137, (October 1927). p. 328-329",
"notes": "The idea that a mathematical formula can bring about a more sensitive radio receiver.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1955,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "rig;instrument",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "As I returned to the study MIss Dukas explained to me that Eric Rogers, who teaches physics at Princeton, had made a gadget for Einstein as a present for his 76th birthday, and that Professor Einstein had been delighted with it. Back in the study, I saw Einstein take from the corner of the room what looked like a curtain rod five feet tall, at the top of which was a plastic sphere about four inches in diameter. Coming up from the rod into the sphere was a small plastic tube about two inches long, terminating in the center of the sphere. Out of this tube there came a string with a little ball at the end. \"You see,\" said Einstein, \"this is designed as a model to illustrate the equivalence principle. The little ball is attached to a string, which goes into the little tube in the center and is at­tached to a spring. The spring pulls on the ball, but it cannot pull the ball up and into the little tube because the spring is not strong enough to overcome the gravitational force which pulls down on the ball.\" A big grin spread across his face and his eyes twinkled with delight as he said: \"And now the equivalence principle.\" Grasping the gadget in the middle of the long brass curtain rod, he thrust it upward until the sphere touched the ceiling. \"Now I will let it drop,\" he said, \"and according to the equivalence principle there will be no gravitational force. So the spring will now be strong enough to bring the little ball into the plastic tube.\" With that he suddenly let the gadget fall freely and vertically, guiding it with his hand, until the bottom reached the floor. The plastic sphere at the top was now at eye level. Sure enough, the ball nestled in the tube.",
"author": "Cohen, I. Bernard",
"title": "An Interview with Einstein",
"source": "Scientific American 193, (July 1955). p. 68-73 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1965,
"decade": 1960,
"primary": "rig;instrument",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "KENNETH D. ROEDER (\"Moths and Ultrasound\") is professor of physi­ology at Tufts University, where he has served since 1931. He was born in England, was graduated from the University of Cambridge and did gradu­ate work there and at the University of Toronto. \"My lifelong interest in in­sects,\" he writes, \"probably stems from a childhood enthusiasm for butterfly collecting.\" Roeder's research deals mainly with the biological aspects of insect behavior. In addition he is \"an incurable tinkerer with mechanical and electronic gadgets,\" an activity that \"led at one time to the construction of an electromechanical analogue of certain phases of cockroach behavior and has played a part in the work on moth hear­ing.\" He says he has \"always felt that if one can make a subject clear and inter­esting to a nonspecialist, it becomes clearer and more interesting to oneself.",
"author": "",
"title": "The Authors",
"source": "Scientific American 212, (April 1965). p. 18-23 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1968,
"decade": 1960,
"primary": "rig;instrument",
"secondary": "retro",
"quote": "The pages present succinct descriptions, drawings and photographs of about three dozen marvelous gadgets from the heroic history of technology, all realized as working models. There is no attempt to follow scale, materials or finish in authentic detail; the aim is to abstract and exhibit the 'particular go' of each machine. Most of the devices are to be made at the woodworker's bench, with some sheet-metal, plastic, rope or hardboard parts. A number call for machined metal gearing that is beyond amateur skills; one can criticize the absence of much effort here to help young people take advantage of the rich marketplace of manufactured parts in our technological era. The book is nonetheless a pleasure and a challenge. Who would not like to see working models of the device used to generate screw threads without copying any existing thread; of the chinese spoon-tilt hammer, an automatic water-power scheme still familiar in Japanese gardens, or of the cornish man-engine, a vertical moving belt of miners, forerunner of the mine hoist?",
"author": "Philip, Phylis Morrison",
"title": "Books",
"source": "Scientific American 221, (December 1969). p. 136-146",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1937,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "rig;misc",
"secondary": "love;lit;matic;mind",
"quote": "I have found Americans out,' writes a dear English friend, who is a good deal of a wag. 'They are gadget-minded. If they see a thing that needs to be done, they rig up a device, mechanical or mental, and make the thing do itself with no further bother.' / 'As a result,' he goes on,' they have created a touch-the-button civilization, and I for one admire it. Why go on doing a thing in the same old way, over and over again, if we can make a robot do it for us, and do it better? My hat is of to the gadget mind.' / To prove his point he refers to the Mark Twain story of the Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. The Yankee saw a saint swaying to and fro in an ecstasy of devotion, and to him it was a clear case of lost motion. So he sat about and invented a device by which to harness the saint and use his motions to run a sewing machine. In other words, he put religion to a practical use. / But, my friend goes on to say, there are some fields in which the gadget mind will not work; and here he gets under our skin a bit. We tried to achieve temperance by prohibition, and it failed. We passed the law, wrote it into the Constitution and thought that the thing was done, and would stay done, or else would go on doing itself. / In the same way, he adds--rubbing it in rather sharply--we proposed the Pact of Paris; just another glorious gadget. We wrote a law outlawing war, renouncing it as a policy of nations. The Law was solemnly signed; an dew thought the thing was done once for all. But, alas, we see now that much remains to be done before war is ended. / In other words, my friend argues rightly, something more than a gadget mind is needed to deal with the issues now before mankind. It cannot be done by a twist of the wrist or the turn of a trick, much less by touching a button. We need vision, and the courage, wisdom and patience to work it out, though it may take a long time. / Yes, the gadget mind is useful in its place; it can do many things. But the spiritual mind, God-illumined, is the hope of the race.",
"author": "Newton, Joseph Fort",
"title": "Chapter 16: \"Gadget-Minded.\"",
"source": " Living Every Day: A Book of Faith, Philosophy, and Fun. p. 25-6",
"notes": "FIND THIS. Includes a discussion of prohibition as a gadget, and Connecticut Yankee",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1942,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "rig;raygun",
"secondary": "definition;wrinkle;war",
"quote": "From now on we shall see a rapid development of electronic gadgeteering--the non-radio application of radio technique--according to Charley Golenpaul, of the Aerovox Corporation. / \"I believe the era of electronic gadgeteering is now opening up in a big way,\" states Mr. Golenpaul. \"In the first place, the ban on amateur radio communications is not going to leave the enterprising 'ham' twirling his thumbs. Of course many 'hams' are already or will soon be in our armed and technical services. Many will find wartime jobs with other United Nations. But those remaining on the home front are going to put their experience, equipment, and ambition to work on new and startling applications in the home, shop, factory, and elsewhere, far removed from customary radio practice. / \"I suppose most radio men have heretofore been too busy with radio proper to find extra time and energy for non-radio or electronic gadgeteering possibilities. However, many of them now are going to use their 'rigs' and parts for new functions. I can visualize some interesting developments -- light-beam telephones for conversing over considerable distances; automatic photo-electric garage-door openers; photo-electric switches turning lights on and off with darkness or daylight; checking the stoking of furnaces or boilers by the chimney smoke; various comparators or instruments for comparing and matching colors and shades; checking solution concentrations and chemical studies by conductivity means; and so on. / \"As a starter, electronic gadgeteer­ing can be based on well-known ele­mentary principles and basic circuits long known to radio amI electrical workers. Many industrial plants are already electronic-gadget conscious. I know of radio servicemen who've got­ ten themselves good jobs in plants he­ cause of their ability to do things better, quicker, and less expensively by electronic means. / \"Make no mistake about it, the temporary suspension of 'ham' communications may well turn out to he a boost. It will generate a lively in­terest in electronic gadgeteering. And when 'ham' communications are re­sumed again with the return of peace, I venture to predict that electronic gadgeteering will comprise a greater field for radio parts, particularly the quality or extra-heavy-duty compo­nents, than all amateur radio activities put together. Furthermore, many a 'ham' will find an interesting way of making real money out of his hobby, and that's something.\"",
"author": "",
"title": "Electronic Gadgeteering May Replace 'Hams'' Interest in Communication",
"source": "Scientific American 167, (July 1942). p. 25-35",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1944,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "rig;wrinkle",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "It's too bad though, that so many Scouts never realize that this same roll of adhesive tape can play an important part in repairing almost any piece of equipment or in rigging up gadgets to make outdoor life more comfortable.",
"author": "",
"title": "Wrinkles and Gadgets",
"source": "Boys' Life. Apr 1944",
"notes": "list of things you can do with adhesive tape",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1971,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "system",
"secondary": "bomb",
"quote": "[…] high-powered missile acquisition radar, used in tracking intercontinental ballistic missiles fired from Vandenberg, emanated lethal radiation throughout the area; needless to say, elaborate safety precautions for Navy personnel were not extended to the luckless Marshall Islanders. Today the Nike-Zeus system has been made obsolete by a more sophisticated nuclear gadget -- the Nike-X defensive missile system (ABM). Kwajalein, now the site of a $165 million Missile Site Radar system (MSR) that serves as a seeing eye for ABM's Spartan and Sprint defense missiles, participates in more than 15,000 operations a year.",
"author": "Connolly, Stephen and Peter Shapiro",
"title": "Staging Area Imperialism",
"source": "The Nation. 11 October 1971. pp. 330-334.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1977,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "tech",
"secondary": "sf",
"quote": "Serena phoned. She was flying into Los Angeles and was free to spend the night with him, she said. He immediately canceled his other plans and agreed to collect her in three hours at the airport. Almost automatically, he asked where she was. \" There is no message, \" she whispered. Levanter took a taxi to the airport. He was half an hour early and dismissed the cab. He wandered through the lounges, watched the departing passengers lined up to pass through the gates of the electronic surveillance gadgetry, had a cup of coffee, and finally went to stand at the entrance of the terminal, where he was to meet her.",
"author": "Anthony, Piers",
"title": "Spell for Chameleon",
"source": "",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1957,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tech;instrument",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "A group at Stanford University is reported to have generated infrared rays by directing million-volt electrons through a bumpy magnetic field. It remains to be seen whether these methods will prove feasible for spectroscopy or for gadgets such as radar. Whenever a practical method is developed for generating high-power radio waves in the region between one­ half millimeter and five millimeters-a source which is tunable and produces highly monochromatic waves-it will be of great value to science and to industry.",
"author": "Gordy, Walter",
"title": "The Shortest Radio Waves",
"source": "Scientific American 196, (May 1957). p. 46-53",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1907,
"decade": 1900,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "nautical;british",
"quote": "an appliance to clean the bottom of the ship, without the necessity of dry-docking or employment of drivers. It consists of an oblong structure armed with wire brushes, and looks very much like a door-mat. This is pulled forwards and backwards by stout hawsers, made fast to the ship's steam capstans. It can be made to traverse any path the operator requires. The bristles of the brushes are magnetised, so that they both attract themselves to the iron of the ship's side and scrape as well.\" / \"It was wonderful to see how quickly the news spread round the ship that the electric scrubbing gadget was worried satisfactorily.",
"author": "",
"title": "The Navy from an Inventor's Point of View",
"source": "Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 182[?] Dec. 1907. p. 746",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1912,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "british;lit",
"quote": "This is a political tract, set in a boiler-room (similar to those in coal-burning vessels of the time) in Hell where various souls are being punished for their sins. \"'Harnessed up the tide--the cool, big, wet, deep, blue, sparkling sea. I believe they did it on the pneumatic principle, not on the hydraulic, if you're interested in those things.' 'I ain't,' Mr. Sugden retorted. 'I'm only concerned with outstanding social facts. We leave machinery to the intellectuals.' 'That's very kind of you. The inventor of this particular gadget was the son of a woman who committed suicide somewhere in the Potteries, I'm told.",
"author": "Kipling, Rudyard",
"title": "The Benefactors",
"source": " The American Magazine v74n3 July",
"notes": "humorous look at the development and conception of weapons of war",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1917,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The First Lieutenant came quickly to the rescue. 'Of course,' he said, 'that's all rot. We're only too grateful to––to Science for trying to invent a new gadget.… Only, you see, sir, in the meanwhile, until you hit on it we feel we aren't doing so badly-–er––just carrying on.",
"author": "Bartimeus",
"title": "The Long Trick",
"source": "",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1920,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "nautical",
"quote": "You make me smile. Upon getting under way what special entry must be made in the ship's log? LIkewise and also, what is a Polyconic Projection? Snap it out, now!' / 'Your poor simp! I'm the man that invented that gadget. ON the level, there's only one question on the whole list that you are sure of.",
"author": "Paine, Ralph Delahaye",
"title": "The Corsair in the War Zone",
"source": "Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin. 1920",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1920,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Look for another match!' I cried to Davis, and although he knew he had no more, he began to throw things out of his pockets right and left. Among these things there fell a smudge cigarette lighter. These instruments were devised by the French on account of their extreme shortage of matches. The gadget consists of a tiny steel wheel, which strikes a piece of flint, which in turn ignites the smudge. The only trouble with these things is that they do not always work.",
"author": "Haslett, Elmer",
"title": "Down and Out and In",
"source": "Luck on the Wing: Thirteen Stories of a Sky Spy. 1920. p. 182-3",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1921,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "There were several earlier types which, although they had their defects, were very effective and frequently 'spotted' the Kaiser's subs at distances of several miles and aided our sub-chasers in running them down and giving them the spurlos versenkt with one of our neat little ash cans. The more modern apparatus upon which I personally worked was not perfected in time to have actual service overseas. This remarkable 'gadget,' which is known as the multi-unit or M.V. Type of hydrophone, consists in general of two lines of twelve equally spaced microphones. They are mounted -- one on each side -- below the water line and either beneath a protective 'blister' outside the skin of the vessel or sometimes within the forward water tank.",
"author": "",
"title": "News from the Classes",
"source": "The Technology Review. v23n3. July, 1921",
"notes": "tool but more of a complex system, a collection of elements that make up this tool, not a small portable implement",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1923,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "It is inexcusable folly to have something go wrong 50 miles from nowhere, and then wish vainly that you had purchased some badly needed gadget before you started. A collapsible bucket, for example, is almost indispensable if the engine overheats and the water boils away. An extra gallon or so of oil and five gallons of gasoline are other factors of safety.",
"author": "",
"title": "Gypsying de Luxe by Auto: Whole Nation is Playground for Summer Tourists; How to Make the Auto Trip Successful",
"source": "Popular Science, July 1923, p. 69",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1924,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The painter of houses has always been puzzled for a way to plant his ladder against the side of the house without making a mark on the freshly laid paint. A way to accomplish this is now offered him in the ingenious ladder-support illustrated. On each upright of the ladder, near the tip, is clamped a curved brace, the other end of which is pointed. These two points, one on either side of the ladder, furnish the bearing points for the ladder. […] and they offer an extraordinarily convenient place from which to suspend the paint pot.",
"author": "",
"title": "New Gadget for the House-Painter",
"source": "Scientific American 130, (March 1924) p. 175-175 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1924,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "british",
"quote": "Handy Gadgets for the Amateur Gardener. All those who have gardens know the fatigue pursuant to kneeling when any operation is required near the surface of the ground. From England we have a kneeling mat which seems to solve the problem very effectually. It is made of rush or straw and the bottom is water-proofed so that the damp and dew will not strike through. These pads are very extensively used in England.",
"author": "",
"title": "Inventions New and Interesting",
"source": "Scientific American 131, (July 1924), p. 37-42 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1929,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "To those of us who, by choice or otherwise, spend the winter in the cooler climates where winter golf is the exception rather than the rule, the slowly passing days of late winter bring with them wistful visions of roll­ing fairways and smooth velvety greens. Then out come the clubs for cleaning and polishing and the time is at hand to take stock of the accessories. What have the past few months contributed to the art of golf? you ask yourself. And at least part of the answer is presented on this page where we show a few of the \"gadgets\" that are now available for the golf enthusiast. May' they help you to improve your game this season.",
"author": "",
"title": "Accessories for the Golf Player",
"source": "Scientific American 140, (April 1929). p. 345-345",
"notes": "ball cleaner, arm support, tees, golf umbrella",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1929,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The pocket lighter, that little gadget which replaces matches and supplies a light for the cigar by a simple flip of the thumb--sometimes--has become so popular in this country that many varieties of cigar-stand filling stations have been devised.",
"author": "",
"title": "Filling Station for Pocket Lighters.",
"source": "Scientific American 140, (April 1929). p. 346-348",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1930,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "ad",
"quote": "Say, here's another glass gadget… Right! The Vivo Tube, for fainting and insect bites, isn't the only 'glass gadget' in the Official First Aid Kit. Take a look at the Mercurochrome Swab. It's a little glass tube with a brush on the end. Break the tip inside the brush--out comes mercurochrome, an antiseptic.",
"author": "",
"title": "",
"source": "Boy's Life, April 1930. p. 54",
"notes": "advertisement for Bauer & Black first aid kit",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1930,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "What do you think pleases my guests the most?' Lewis asked. After my tour of bewildering wonders I hesitated. The engineer smiled and pointed to a shiny metal gadget on the wall. 'That little twenty-five-cent bottle opener and corkscrew, combined, makes more of a hit, if you'll believe it, than some of our most ambitious engineering schemes. They think it's wonderful, and ask where they can buy one like it or whether they can have an extra one as a souvenir. That's human nature, I guess. The average man, when he turns on a light or opens a radiator valve, doesn't think of the power plant below that supplies him light and heat. There's far more to running a hotel than one ever sees in a guest room.'",
"author": "",
"title": "Modern Hotel Is a Huge Machine",
"source": "Popular Science, April 1930. p. 142",
"notes": " Both small, simple, utilitarian device, and something of a triviality that can cause wonderment at how it amuses people.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1930,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "What's that? said a St. Louis banker. Peel potatoes with a crank! It's absolutely incredible. Just another inventor's crazy pipe-dream. Why, I know a lot of women who would pay you ten dollars a piece for such a gadget and figure they had a bargain.",
"author": "",
"title": "Peel Potatoes With a Crank!",
"source": "Popular Mechanics, Dec 1930. ",
"notes": "advertisement",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1930,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Now we'll give it a real good cleaning out, he said as he carried the radiator over to the washstand and attached a special fixture to the lower hose connection. What's that gadget? Backson inquired. Latest thing to clean radiators, Gus replied. Water goes in the big pipe and the little one is connected to the air pressure line. Shooting the air in with the water in short bursts fills the radiator with a churning mixture of water and bubbles that loostens the sludge and rust lots better than the ordinary flushing out.",
"author": "",
"title": "What You Should Know About Antifreeze",
"source": "Popular Science, Dec 1930. p. 86",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1934,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "ad",
"quote": "Space permitting, we could list dozens of such things … 'little things' we have discovered in our pursuit of perfection in hotel service. Clean, new pen points, both 'stub' and 'fine' … fresh, free-flowing ink … a pin cushion with its quick repair supply of buttons, pins and threaded needles … a gadget for hanging trousers properly … the convenient desk calendar … a telephone-attached memorandum pad, etc., etc.",
"author": "",
"title": "Little Things That Add to Your Comfort and Safety are Important to Statler Hotels",
"source": " Scientific American 151, (October 1934) p. 213",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1938,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "If the summer now drawing to a close had any distinction fun-wise, it was in all the new and wonderful things people carried to the beach with them as a protection against the sun. Nowhere was this display of luxury gadgets more concentrated than at the private beach clubs along the Atlantic seaboard. At such places, at least, medical warnings against sunburn had had their effect on sunbathers who employed all manner of doodads to avoid blistering.\" an Abercrombie & Fitch screen made of canvas and cellophane. Sunshade that lays over eyes. \"Lewis & Conger's 'sun-meter,' a clocklike device which rings a bell after a set time to warn you to turn over like a squab on a spit.\" … caption: \"With no gadgets at all this girl has a grand time just holding her hat on.",
"author": "",
"title": "Beach Clubs: Sunbathers' newfangled gadgets accented the summer of 1938",
"source": "LIFE. Aug 29, 1938",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1939,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "definition",
"quote": "First Prize: Gadget Contest at the Neenah-Menasha Meeting of the Central States Sewage Works Association, Oct. 20, 1983. This gadget was more than a gadget and would be classed as an apparatus. It was Don E. Bloodgood's apparatus for determining the rate of oxygen utilization by activated sludge. This apparatus is described by him in the paper which he presented at the above meeting, published on page 927, Vol. 10 (November, 1938) of This Journal. The cost is very small compared to well known apparatus on the market, and is said to be more accurate.",
"author": "Hatfield, W.D.",
"title": "Gadget Division",
"source": "Sewage Works Journal. v11n1. Jan 1939. p. 132.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1940,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "rod holder, fly box, aluminum creel, trolling fin, kit-bag chair, adjustable rod grip",
"author": "",
"title": "Gadgets for Anglers",
"source": "Popular Science. July 1940. 54",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1940,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "definition",
"quote": "Our monumental work on the Theory of Gadgets which has been, as they say, on the stocks for twenty years, is nearing completion. But so, apparently, is civilization [gallows humor in the lead-up to war…]. And in case our publication date does not succeed in anticipating the final crash of Armageddon, we would like to give you a few hints of what these volumes would have contained. / Everybody knows what a gadget is, and yet a definition is hard to find. After deep thought, we givey ou this: A gadget is anything which, designed to simplify life, actually complicates it. We are fully aware that this definition is almost revolutionary in its comprehensiveness. Yet it is tenable. It includes everything from a battleship to a fountain pen. It includes the cigarette lighter that is always running dry, the electric icebox that springs a sulphur leak when eight guests are waiting for cocktails, the automatic shocke that saves two seconds in starting your car every day for thirty days, and on the thirty-first robs you of two hours of your time and two dollars of your money. It includes most of the things you give your friends for Christmas, And [sic] all that you get. / In our chapter on Man and the Gadget, we show how man, the eternal sucker, progresses from enthusiasm to disillusion, repeatedly, all his life long--for the gadget has no experience value. Elsewhere we estimate the time and money spent on the invention, manufacture, sale, operation, and final frenzied destruction of gadgets. We list al known gadgets, showing the difference between promise and performance. And finally, we paint a picture of a gadget-less Utopia, with a few practical hints on how to attain it. / The difficulty in completing this work has been in our gadget-testing department. For obviously, if a single gadget is really found to simplify life, it nullifies our whole argument. And new gadgets appear daily. We were ready this morning to write finis--when we read of the new false teeth plates which have magnets set in them, with like poles opposing, to keep upper and lower plates apart and in place. We have always insisted on doing all testing ourself. Yet we still retain most of our original teeth, and are reluctant to sacrifice them, even to add the final proof to our theory. For if the magnets don't work, we have, it is true, the proof, but are just where we were before, and with nothing to chew with. And if they do work, a lifetime of effort is undone.",
"author": "Brooks, Walter",
"title": "Once Over Lightly: Armchair Musings of our Philosophic Observer: Gadget Theory.",
"source": "Scribner's Commentator. February, 1940. v7n4. p. 42",
"notes": "Mainly known as a children's author -- Freddy the Pig, and the story that inspired Mister Ed. ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1941,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "list",
"quote": "Picnics, future or past, are the only ones which everyone thoroughly enjoys. Of the two, the picnic-to-be offers limitless possibilities this year. Never has there been such a collection of picnic gadgets. Never has there been such enticing picnic literature. / The photographs on these and following pages are an abbreviated catalog of modern picnic paraphenalia. There are suitcases which are transformed into a table and benches, collapsible water buckets, asbestos gloves, aprons whihc become cushions, aprons with pot-holders, aprons for autographs, spits for shish kebabs, molds for hamburgers, grills for frankfurters, barbecue grills on wheels, cutlery kits, fitted cases with non-spillable salt cellars, constant bug sprayers, and dozens of other silly and practical devices.",
"author": "",
"title": "Picnic Parks & Gadgets Lure Public Outdoors",
"source": " LIFE. June 9, 1941",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1941,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Before you realize it the big Douglas C-39 transport is settling to earth. Here at the air depot are bigger and better hangars; better, in that they are equipped with most of the gadgets and machinery found in an aircraft factory, even to the expensive machine tools­ huge planers, millers, lathes, and grinders. Inside the hangar there are several craft in various stages of construction or destruction. The sergeant explains there are two classes of jobs done here at the de­ pot: FWT rebuilding jobs, and the reclamation of wrecks. FWT, he says, means \"fair, wear and tear,\" the wear due to normal service.",
"author": "Peck, James H.L.",
"title": "Warbird Doctors: Planes Alone Don't Make an Airforce; It Takes Trained Men to Keep Fighting Pilots in the Air",
"source": " Scientific American 164, (April 1941). p. 212-214",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1944,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The Saturday morning session opened with an announcement by George Moore on the winners of the gadget contest. A total of five gadgets was submitted but it is believed that if traveling conditions had been better a larger number would have been submitted because there is always considerable interest shown in this contest. … The winning gadgets submittd and their order in the contest are as follows: / The lime slacking machine sumbitted by Harold R. Fanning … who is Superintendent of Sanitation and Bendix Aviation Corporation, received first place. / The sludge sampler submitted by… received second place. / The diagram of the sludge sampler submitted … was third choice of the membership. / Following the announcement regarding the gadget contest winners, Morrish Cohn of Schenectady pointed out the need of this nation for more money to conduct this war and appealed to everybody to buy an extra War Bond in the Fifth War Bond Drive.",
"author": "",
"title": "Proceedings of Member Associations",
"source": "Sewage Works Journal. v16n6 (Nov 1944), p. 1269. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1945,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Be sensible. Get wise to the new gadgets and use them!' say the youngsters of today. … 'I can't hear a sound, except through my skull and with this gadget.' He pointed to his bone-conduction hearing aid.\"",
"author": "Pitkin, Walter B.",
"title": "The Advantage of Handicaps",
"source": "The Rotarian Oct 1945. p. 16",
"notes": " How soldiers with wounds, amputations, and disfigurations cope. Connect with Gernsback's osophon??",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1946,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "Now, with honorable discharge, some 20 basic plastics are back in civvies--but not the same youthful prewar civvies. Plastics' postwar garb is man-size stuff worthy of materials that can swing their weight around in the industrial big leagues. … In view of these facts, can you blame the industry for being a little irate over any interpretation of plastics as something out of which lipstick holders and all sorts of gadgets are made? … 'Let's not talk about new plastic gadgets,' pleaded a spokesman for the Dow Chemical Company recently. 'Every manufacturer is being pushed at the present time to produce enough plastics for practical purposes.\"",
"author": "Whittaker, Wayne",
"title": "Plastic World in the Making",
"source": "Popular Mechanics. Sep 1946. 145-149",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1948,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "New crop includes everything from retrievers to mirrors to help the duffer approach par. In the perennial pursuit of par, America's three million golfers spend $40 million annually for equipment. A surprisingly large proportion of this money goes for the scores of ingenious gadgets which are supposed to help every duffer hit his tee shot a little farther, get on the green a little sooner, and putt a little bit straighter. While some of these gadgets help lower the golfer's score, others soothe his sensitive nerves, like the 'Retrevit' which makes it simple to fish a poorly hit ball out of a stream. In spite of the expenditures of cash and energy, however, less than .5% of all the golfers in the U.S. can shoot on par or under.",
"author": "",
"title": "Golfers' Gadgets",
"source": "LIFE. July 19, 1948. p. 91",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1948,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "month",
"quote": "Pulling power of radio was dramatically demonstrated recently when a client, Gadget of the Month Club, was all but snowed under by tremendous response to plugs bought thru the spot sales department of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). Gadget of the Month, via blurbs on the web's managed, owned and represented stations, was getting around 15,000 responses daily on its offer of gadgets for a small sum of money. Lacking a national distribution setup, the firm fell far behind on deliveries--which resulted in stations getting plenty of squawks from listeners. For a time some stations were afraid they'd have to take a loss and refund moola to listeners, but it's claimed that the company is now caught up on deliveries. According to Don Davis of the agency of Davis, Harrison, & Simonds, Gadgets of the Month has now bought time on 350 outlets. For a time, however, stations were plenty jittery. Tex McCrary, for instance, on WNBC, NBC's New York key, asked listeners to let him known if they had failed to receive their gadgets.",
"author": "",
"title": "NBC Spots Swamp Gadget Sellers",
"source": "The Billboard. January 31, 1948. p. 8 ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1949,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "A little home hair-cutter gadget--a comb with a razor attached-- has zipped its way into fame in recent months. Barbers pooh-pooh it as a threat, but sales are going strong.",
"author": "",
"title": "The Battle Against Baldness",
"source": " Kiplinger's Personal Finance. Feb 1949.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1949,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "There are several little 'gadgets' and household articles which suddenly reappear on sale… …spring gadgets, one of which is shown in Figure 1. They fit over the needle and needle-clamp; the advertising claims that they make it convenient and easily possible to darn, sew on buttons, make buttonholes, applique, do quilting, attach zippers, and overcast seams on the machine.",
"author": "",
"title": "Refrigerator 'Gadgets'",
"source": "Consumers' Research Bulletin. Vol. 23-26. 1949. p. 18.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1953,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Auto-supply dealers may not list a jack as scientific apparatus, but this and many other ordinary gadget [sic] often save the day for research workers studying highbrow problems. At right, a jack tests the strength of a heated plastic sample. In the same GE laboratory, a windshield-wiper motor powers a stirring rod to keep a fluid in a freezing bath at an even temperature. The rattrap hep Dr. A. Harry Sharbaugh measure electric pulses.",
"author": "",
"title": "Everyday Gadgets Work for Science",
"source": "Popular Science. May 1953. p. 86",
"notes": "That even the most simple or mundane household tools can have applications in advanced research and development.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1953,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "lit",
"quote": "Patty pretends to be absorbed in the slot machine binoculars. She wants to duck questions. PATTY I wonder how this gadget works, anyhow. DON (holds up dime) for a dime you can find out. PATTY (she looks at him--takes it.) Why, thank's a lot. You are nice. Before when you came out I was pretending. (She drops in dime, looks through lenses and swivels gadget around, looking through binoculars.)\" (8) \"PATTY They have a fascinating new gadget. Whenever it starts to rain, you press a little button and it squirts water onto your windshield so that the wiper won't get it all smeared. I think of it every time it starts to rain. … But the boy Vicki goes with does, and he lets me work it. Not drive it. Work the gadget. (31)",
"author": "Herbert, Frederick Hugh",
"title": "The Moon is Blue: Comedy in Three Acts. 1953",
"source": "",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "multiple quotes"
},
{
"year": 1955,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "With an estimated 21,000,000 Americans taking to the water this year, it's not surprising that there's a growing crop of gadgets on the market. Here are some of the new ones. The speed wand is an inexpensive plastic tube that you just stick in the water as you go cruising along and then pull out to read like a thermometer.",
"author": "",
"title": "1955 Boat Show: New Gadgets",
"source": "Popular Science. Mar 1955. p. 170",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1955,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "For the man of just ordinary skill who does not want a fancy power workshop--here's a mighty useful gadget.",
"author": "",
"title": "The Quarter-Inch Drill",
"source": "Changing Times: The Kiplinger Magazine. Sept 1955. p. 44",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1955,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "",
"author": "",
"title": "Gadgets and Gear for the Sportsman.",
"source": "Popular Science. July 1955",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "title or quote"
},
{
"year": 1955,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Whether assuming the shape of a comical mobile or a sturdy book rack, wire--with its pliability and lack of bulk--is taking top honors as the basic material for modern gadgets and household accessories.",
"author": "",
"title": "Modern Living: Crazy Wire Gadgets",
"source": " Sep 1, 1955.",
"notes": "PIC",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1955,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "To beat the torrid summer heat and utilize every available short-cut to better homemaking, the up-to-date housewife is keeping the simple, inexpensive gadgets shown on these pages high on the 'buying list.' ",
"author": "",
"title": "Modern Living: Hot-Weather Gadgets",
"source": "Jet. July 28, 1955",
"notes": "PIC http://bit.ly/bqKpsn",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1955,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Our visit to Viki was on March 26 of last year. She was the picture of robust health, and in fact had grown so strong that a small cottage had been fitted up for her. There were a refrigerator, a din­ing table, can openers, electric fans-all her beloved gadgets. The plan was to install her there in May, supervising and observing her during the day and leaving her to sleep alone at night. But Viki never got there-and the cottage stands vacant and idle.",
"author": "Gray, George W.",
"title": "The Yerkes Laboratories",
"source": "Scientific American 192, (February 1955). p. 67-77",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1955,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Crabs, crayfish, and mussels are the octopus' favorite foods, and it wants them alive. IT is much better at opening a mussel than the most experienced human shucker armed with the latest Abercrombie and Fitch gadget.",
"author": "Newman, James R.",
"title": "Children's Books",
"source": "Scientific American 193, (December 1955). p. 112-123",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1956,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "",
"author": "New Things for the House: Just Look at all the Novel Appliances, Fixtures, and Gadgets You Can Buy to Modernize the Old Place",
"title": "Changing Times: The Kiplinger Magazine. May 1956. p. 31",
"source": "",
"notes": "Things such as the Simplon Corp.'s built-in vacuum system.",
"requires_revision": "title or quote"
},
{
"year": 1957,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "He drinks little and smokes not at all. He plays a little golf, is an enthusiastic photographer, seizes any chance to travel, particularly by car, and is a gadget devotee, whether the gadget be a dictating machine or a domestic labour-saver. His interests all lie in the field of science, and the arts mean little to him.",
"author": "",
"title": "Profile: Dr. H.W. Melville: His Study was the Growth of Molecules",
"source": "The New Scientist. Feb 7, 1957",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1958,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The wonderfully imaginative and often fantastic world of gadgetry was unfolded last week in the New York Trade Show Building, with more than 140 exhibitors taking part. This was the second such effort promoted by a group of businessmen and managed by Hal Sommers, and the number of inventions aimed at simplifying everyday tasks came within a shade of doubling the total exhibited last year. Gadgets have always held a fascination for the man on the street and his better half. Among the items which have been surefire crowd stoppers in the past are the little gimmicks--the better mousetrap, so to speak--which show at a glance how to do something quicker and cleaner. Some of those shown in New York, however, are a bit obscure as far as practical purpose is concerned, but they still are interesting enough to win attention. … The Gadget Show was initiated last year as a showplace for thousands of unknown innovations that flow from the American inventive mind. To facilitate the marketing of practical gadgets the show management formed a Gadget Manufacturers' Institute to counsel exhibitors in this year's show. It is staffed to conduct market research studies on bot consumer and trade levels, to define the potential markets for inventors and manufacturers. The show was open to both consumers and trade.",
"author": "Kirby, Irwin",
"title": "Gadgets' Success Stems from Better Mousetrap",
"source": "Billboard. Aprill 21, 1958",
"notes": "On one of the first gadget conferences / trade shows, taking place in NYC.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1958,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "month",
"quote": "the world of kitchen gadgets is never in finer fettle than during the fair season, when gadget workers have already been pulling in cash at boardwalk stands, department stores and farmers markets. This peculiar form of gadgetry is aimed right at the women, and in the hands of capable workers, it hardly ever misses its mark. / During good times and bad there has always been a call for gadgets. They make their mark, last in popularity for a cycle of three years, more or less, then seemingly die as quickly as they were born. But this is more a hibernation than death, since in kitchen gadgetry as in many other merchandising fields, old objects are frequently born over again and ride high on a new wave of popularity. / For example: 20 years ago a big item on boardwalks was the combination peeler-slicer, which both peeled and cored fruit such as apples, as well as scoring corn and being useful as a slicer. That was 20 years ago, and it's on the scene again. / For example: Three years ago, choppers became a hot item, starting with a Swiss import retailing at $1.98. American versions, like Rotomatic and Chopomatic, competed with the Swiss Blitzhacker. Price was $2.98. Mass production overtook the price and stamped it down to $1.98 and even lower in some cases, causing some perplexity by price-conscious demonstrators. Rotomatic was replaced by the Imperial Food Chopper during this period. But this price confusion was followed by a waning popularity and it was decided to produce a super model with a bigger bowl, capable of holding more and bigger vegetables and eliminating the need to slice some of them down to chopper size. Now we have the Grown Imperial. / From 1952-'54 the handy little Mouli Grater ($1 retail) nurtured a company which has taken on a wider line of kitchen gadgets. There is a $2.98 Julienne and $4.98 Salad-Maker (retail). / Others among the wide assortment of plastic and metal gizmos directed at the American housewife--and so artfully demonstrated thruout the land--include a handy radish cutter which creates a radish flowered…\" / * * * \"Gadgets used to be set out on counters in cartons, but lately the poly bag has become a common display method. One philosophy for this is that the American housewife wants to see what she's buying. Some French basket suppliers provide baskets in bulk, without any covering whatever. The basket has come up so strongly that one manufacturer, fearful of rapid over-saturation, is offering a combination package. This contains the French basket, a pastry maker, and pastryman's cloth. / But there is virtually no end to the number of handy little gadgets offered as time-savers for the American kitchen. The target is the womenfolk and, praise be, they have responded in admirable fashion for generations, always pushovers for kitchen aids.\" Later, kinds of objects: \"inexpensive tools, 'unbreakable combs,' radio station clearing coils, and other inexpensive pieces of merchandise.",
"author": "",
"title": "Kitchen Gadgetry: Women Pushovers for Work Savers",
"source": "Billboard. June 23, 1958. p. 86",
"notes": "This article actually implies that there are different \"form(s) of gadgetry.\" Here, we get a sense of the market of this particular kind, the labor saving tool, mainly used by housewives in the kitchen.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1958,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "month",
"quote": "Since considerable heat (ill-wind) can be created thru poor presentations, sloppy work and phony items, it was editable that a gadget workers' protective organization make an appearance. The new non-profit Exhibitors Association of America, headquartered in California, has been incorporated with the avowed aim of stopping unfair practices bothy by and against demonstrators. It would improve the level of the demonstration industry and protect it from space rent and percentage gouging. / The person working gadgets is all things to all viewers, wherever the public congregates. If they want humor he has it; the same goes for the many other qualities necessary to successful entertainment on a personnel level. It is so personal, in fact, that unlike high paid public performers, the gadget worker's immediate audience rarely numbers more than three dozen people and is no more than 12 feet from him. If he is a top-notcher, however, he could get 75 per cent of his tip (audience) to vote him into Congress as easily as spring (spend) for a sale. / Basically speaking, the new and novel item is a traffic-stopper, enabling the demonstrator to build his tip. He presents it in a [sic] appealing way through humor, stories, etc., hooding his tip's attention while presenting the item. Then comes his close (windup) and the request for sales. Then comes a rehash of his spiel to convince additional viewers who have not sprung and also to hold the tip, which in itself is a good way to stop more traffic as passers-by gather to see what's going on. / The business is a small one and far from the usual housewares salesmanship. It has workers (commission agents) who act for the leaders, those pace-setters in the field. There are independents, who do their own buying and renting of space, and who work alone except for an occasional partner or member of the family. / The field's code of ethics is not one that a banker would follow. It is generally a cash-on-the-line business, but it is not improper to owe money for merchandise when one is tapped out (broke), but eventual payment is a must if a worker expects to last in the industry. Demonstrators playing a red one (successful fair date or celebration) are prone to help out another clansman by lending money or merchandise. Credit information is entirely word of mouth, however, and reputations are soon established for honesty and reliability. / Altho most demonstrators work on limited capital a great deal of money can be made quickly and lost just as fast, in the trade. Experience brings with it the ability to judge the quality and potential earnings of a location, and the knack of securing an occasional ex for gadgetry at certain fairs, on traveling shows, and at stores. Sometimes a respected worker can control all gadget locations on a fairground by proving his competence to the fair secretary. / There is considerable disillusionment in the business,w which is constantly having its personnel weeded out as johnny-come-latelys fold up at the first sign of hardship. Old-timers know, tho that rainy days soon pass, and when they do, the clan is busy at work building more tips and pocketing the profits.",
"author": "",
"title": "Assn. Protects Both Public, Gadget Worker",
"source": "Billboard. June 23, 1958.",
"notes": "The Billboard magazine covers the formation of an association of \"gadget workers,\" in which the gadget worker is himself a kind of gadget, \"all things to all viewers, wherever the public congregates.\" Uses the lingo like \"tip\" for audience member(s), the close (windup of the presentation), and a spring (when people spend).",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1959,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "I fling that statement into the teeth of the sociologists who insist we have never had it so good. We own machines, they say, to wash our dishes and to blend the hollandaise sauce. We have gadgets to burn our toast, grind up our garbage and dry the laundry on rainy days. … Gadgets solve only mechanical problems. They do not spice stew or mend the linen napkins. They do not shop for groceries, plan menus, clean the car, entertain, administer, take temperatures or roll bandages for the Ladies of Charity.\" New section: \"The need for a radical gadget.\" \"For while machines multiply, so do our responsibilities. And no gadget can teach us how to best split--perhaps I should say, splinter--our personalities in order to live up to current standards. Grandmother owned no vacuum cleaner but she also had fewer demands on her skills. … She was not expected, as we are, to combine in her one ladylike person the functions of wife, mother, interior decorator, registered nurse, child psychologist, landscape gardener, participator in public affairs, scintillating hostess, director of budgets and general good sport.",
"author": "McGinley, Phyllis and Nathaniel Benchley",
"title": "Loafing: a Big Challenge to Men and a Laugh to Wives",
"source": "LIFE. Dec 28, 1959. p. 153",
"notes": "Anticipates arguments made in Cowan's More Work for Mother. A section written by a man, and a parallel column by a woman. Phyllis's column",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1959,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "american;definition",
"quote": "The 'gadget', which is defined by Webster as slang meaning a 'mechanical contrivance, a device, or any ingenious article' has become a fundamental part of the American scene.\" \"One cannot generalize from the study of these two cases. The psychological mechanisms described need not be characteristic of typical cultural attitudes, although there seems generally to be something derogatory in the use of the term, gadget\" (339). * * *\"The machine deals with the external world directly and, although there are many exceptions, strives to create order from disorder. One can say that it is similar to a secondary process operation which takes the unorganized and gives it organization. In most cases a human being is required to operate machines. The gadget differs from the complex machine in that it minimizes the importance of the human being whereas the ordinary machine augments a person's capacity to do work which requires secondary process operations. For example, typewriting is the use of a machine to record ideas which are refined and organized in the process of transmitting them to the machine. The typewriter is thus a mechanical aid to the secondary process operation. The gadget, on the other hand, requires a minimum of human intervention and gives the illusion of operating independently. / One cannot conceive of a machine performing secondary process operations independently, because in order to accomplish such a function there must also be a primary process. There are, however, a variety of electronic computers that seem almost to be able to think. Cybernetics, as we all know, has viewed the psychic apparatus in terms analogous to those of an electronic circuit and has caused machines to be built that function in a manner that is analogous to human logic. / Both patients stressed that the function of a gadget is secondary in importance to its operation, which obscured its purpose to them. Whether it worked or not, in terms of accomplishing what it is supposed to do, was a minor consideration. This does not mean that the gadget did not have to work perfectly in a mechanical sense, because if it did not the gadgeteer would be frustrated. What it did mean, to both the patients, was that the human appreciation of what the gadget accomplishes, for example, reproduction of music in such a way as to provide a gratifying and moving experience, tended to take second place in their minds to a pleasure in the operation of the gadget itself.\" (336). \"Common among all the patients in this group was anger toward the gadget and the 'gadgeteer'. To define these terms for the purpose of this paper is not easy. Any technological device, especially when first introduced, can be considered a gadget. These patients for the most part objected to two aspects of these devices which may be classified as follows. First, the regulation of time as in switches with either an automatic control or a feed-back mechanism to interrupt a circuit and turn something off or on. Included were such items as furnace controls, coffee makers, and radio switches that turn other mechanisms on and off. Second, enhancement of passivity. In this class can be included practically all objects that do work, and consequently permit more leisure. Automatic dishwashers, automatic transmissions in automobiles, and, especially, remote control of television without getting up from one's armchair are a threat because of the enhancement of passivity. Television itself was scorned by one patient who nevertheless succumbed to its lure and then watched it for hours every night. One patient was particularly chagrined to learn there was a switch that automatically controls a fan for ventilating a house, depending on the amount of heat in the attic. That it required a minimum of human intervention for its operation was what this patient found most disturbing. / This classification is sketchy and not technologically precise. As it is manifestly impossible to state definitely where invention ends and gadgeteering begins, it is striking that these patients frequently made such arbitrary distinctions. Patients pointed out that function was of little importance; the operation of the gadget was the primary feature. One patient spoke with anger of persons who were more interested in the tonal qualities of complex high fidelity sets than in the music. He referred to a recent joke of a person who contented himself with studying the wave patterns produced by an oscillograph hooked into the system.\" (330) Catalogues patients who can only appreciate photographs and not painting for instance, appreciating technical perfection over beauty. \"In these instances, it is the person who is ingenious, not the machine; and such a person strives to be capable of accomplishing almost anything. The omnipotent qualities of such fantasies are extremely valuable in enhancing narcissism. Such a fantasy, especially when it is as compulsive as it was in both these patients, serves as a narcissistic, omnipotent, magical defense against the inner awareness of a weak and constricted ego\" (339). \"To this artist, as it was to the scientist, the gadget served as an intensive means of communicating with reality.\" \"In both these patients, the gadget was not only a factor that represented the operation of the secondary process, which is in opposition to instinctual forces, but, more specifically, it was a factor in preserving identity. In the first case, there was a direct correlation between the patient's interest in gadgets and security in his identity. In the second case, there seemed to be an inverse correlation; greater preoccupation with the gadget threatened the patient's ego ideal, and made him feel less secure of his identity.",
"author": "Giovacchini, Peter L.",
"title": "On Gadgets",
"source": "Psychoanalytic Quarterly. 28: 330-341. 1959",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "multiple quotes"
},
{
"year": 1959,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "bomb",
"quote": "Pascual now is claiming for himself a new attitude. 'I'm really ready,' he says. 'My arm feels better because of that machine.' / The 'machine,' according to Herb Heft, chief publicist of the Senators, isn't quite 'new.' 'It's a gadget that our trainer, George Lentz, used on only two pitchers--Sid Hudson and Rae Scarborough,' he explains. 'He'd put it away because nobody else had much confidence in it, but now Pascual thinks it's the greatest invention since atomic energy.' / It's merely a dusted-off gadget that vibrates with a rubber tip, Heft says, but it makes Pascual feel that the only-tired arm of a starting pitcher isn't his own private hell the next day.",
"author": "Stann, Francis",
"title": "Much Stuff--Little Success",
"source": "Baseball Digest. June 1959. p. 23",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1970,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "definition",
"quote": "Most of us who live in the latter decades of the 20th century take it for granted that advances in technology represent practical applications of earlier scientific discoveries. In our vernacular the term \"science and technology\" is subconsciously hyphenated; once when I tried to refer in print to technology and science the typesetter \"corrected\" the sequence. In actuality the marriage of technology and science is not more than a century and a quarter old. […] Before that time science and technology lived apart. Science had been a largely speculative effort to understand nature, whereas technology was an ex­collusively practical attempt to use nature for human purposes. The two seldom in­terraced. […] How did technicians operate before they learned to get innovative ideas from science-indeed, before science had reached a state that could provide many such ideas? […] We underestimate today what keen empirical perception can pro­duce by way of technological novelty quite unrelated to scientific thinking. […] ",
"author": "White, Lynn Jr.",
"title": "Medieval Uses of Air",
"source": " Scientific American 223, (August 1970). p. 92-100",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1970,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "several strangely marked metal rules, a ball of twine, a cigarette-making machine, plastic cigarette cases with oval holes cut out of them, four ignition points, half-a-dozen ball bearings, a miniature hale of cotton, three shot glasses, and a handful of the oddly shaped little steel plates like the one Elliott had seen Grady cleaning his shoes with. \" Makeup rules, \" Grady said. \" I thought it might be some new kind of guitar pick. What's a makeup rule? \" \" Printer's gadget. Use it to build ads, make up straight matter, clean your fingernails, open beer, most anything that needs prying, scraping, screwing, or splitting. \" \" You a printer? \" \" Mostly. Let's see how it goes.\"",
"author": "Porterfield, Nolan",
"title": "Cross My Father's Ground",
"source": "Harpers. April 1970. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1970,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "New York City's Parks Department had a problem: tree thieves. One night somebody pinched 80 rhododendrons along upper Fifth Avenue; last year thieves dug up and hauled away more than $55,000 worth of newly planted shrubs and trees. Now the Parks people rig each new planting with a chain shackled to a stake. The stake is dropped into the hole and turned horizontally. Then the plant roots are arranged around the stake, the hole is filled and the entire gadget concealed with earth. The Parks Department claims it has foiled at least one would-be thief. Workmen in Central Park recently found a plant with all the dirt dug out around its roots, but still firmly anchored to its stake.",
"author": "",
"title": "Spare That Tree",
"source": "Time. 27 February 1970. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1970,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "trivial",
"quote": "Is there a fuse blown and you haven't noticed because you haven't been anywhere else in the house? Are the control buttons correctly set and pushed in or turned all the way? Is the door or lid closed securely? A careful check first can save you time, money and a good deal of chagrin when a hastily summoned repairman does nothing more than reach down and nonchalantly push the electric plug back into the socket. A word about some of the lesser labor-savers, the kitchen gadgets, in particular. Think about them before you buy them. If they will not represent a real convenience, or you would not use them regularly, forget them. They take up valuable space, add to clutter, and do not pay their way in saving time. Sometimes they waste time. The mechanical hand chopper has not yet been invented that will do a more efficient job than a good sharp knife and a supple wrist attached to the arm of an accomplished cook.",
"author": "Skelsey, Alice",
"title": "the working Mother's Guide",
"source": "New York: Random House. 1970",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1970,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "retro",
"quote": "The pace is lively and the tone sure. Ancient bureaucracy gets no char­ity from Hodges; weighing very lightly a good deal of evidence, he is committed to the superior inventiveness of unstable periods in history. Materials engage his interest most easily; it is clear that he prefers chemistry to physics. One mar­velous gadget is a bronze sickle with a wooden handle cunningly fitted to the user's thumb and fingers that \"would un­doubtedly win an award at any design center.\" It was made by an alpine peas­ant craftsman 3,000 years ago.",
"author": "Philip, Phylis Morrison",
"title": "Books",
"source": "Scientific American 223, (December 1970). p. 122-135",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1972,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Seconds later they were conferring over a blown-up print of the fillings in my teeth. There was a mutual decision that one of them was unduly large and had a rather unusual shape. A sinister looking array of dental gadgetry emerged and they had the filling out in an instant. While the tooth was being refilled with enamel -- l'll say that much for them -- the original filling was being zapped by a spectroscope. They seemed neither depressed nor elated when its metallic content proved to be that of an aecel) ted dental alloy.",
"author": "Harrison, Harry",
"title": "The Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat",
"source": "Garden City, New York: Nelson Doubleday, Inc. 1972.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1972,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Perhaps the most common devices now being offered to fed-up Manhattanites are inexpensive ($5 and under) tear-gas sprays, available in many drugstores. Often combined with dye that marks an attacker for police identification, these sprays come disguised as everything from cigarette lighters to lipsticks. There is also the $9.98 electric shock rod, a gadget that operates on four ordinary flashlight batteries and, according to the firm that markets it, releases \" enough power to stop an angry bull in its tracks. \" The rod is more likely to prove shocking to the user when it fails to deter the attacker.",
"author": "",
"title": "The Best Defense",
"source": "Time Magazine. 27 March 2011. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "wrong date?"
},
{
"year": 1972,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The nail clipper is real handy for snipping loose ends or snarled leaders. To date, it's been my most-used gadget. The knife is for opening up your first trout to see what he's been feeding on.",
"author": "Smyth, Ed",
"title": "Hooked by the Wily Trout",
"source": "Saturday Evening Post. Summer 1972.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1976,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "tool",
"secondary": "lit;love",
"quote": "Reread mythology, dark devouring parents, reread it constantly. You ate up my old friend Louis B. and you almost got me. Our neighbor John Burtz was found swinging from the ceiling of his farm shed last week by one of his seven children. He had wound a noose around his throat, then pulled the hydraulic lift of his bulldozer. He was a laughing, brawny man with meat on his breath, it was said that he loved machines excessively, that he was gadget crazy, deeply in debt. At the funeral, his two brothers come into the church trying to support his widow by each arm. A useless gesture, since she walks steadfast and crisply, supporting them if anything, with no outward show of grief. At the cemetery they stand very close together in front of the grave, huddled together like cattle seeking warmth, the raw November air pierces like needles, the sky is of the low, unvariegated gray that precurses snow.",
"author": "DeLillo, Don",
"title": "Ratner's Star",
"source": "",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no page number"
},
{
"year": 1905,
"decade": 1900,
"primary": "tool;cog;gauge;propername",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "But, as above stated, the methods of tying the cotton while under this extreme pressure as usually practiced are such that when the pressure is removed the bales expand until their density is only about 22.5 or 23 pounds to the cubic foot. Various methods have been used to prevent this expansion, at least in part, and so produce a bale of greater density. These methods seem to be practicable, though of varying utility, but they all involve increased expense. Among them is the Gadget process, so called, an attachment by which wires are drawn tightly around the bale and twisted while the cotton is held between the jaws of the compress. By this method a density of perhaps 30 to 35 pounds is retained, and bales of that density and consequently smaller size would apparently permit car loadings of 40,000 pounds and upwards. To what extent the Gadget attachment is in actual use is not disclosed by the testimony. […] By the use of the Gadget attachment and similar devices a bale of still greater density is produced which loads readily 35,000 to 40,000 pounds.",
"author": "",
"title": "Decisions of the Interstate Commerce Commission of the United States. No 692. Planters' Compress Company v. Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railway Company; New York Central & Hudson Railway Company",
"source": "Interstate Commerce Reports vol. 11.",
"notes": "on transporting cotton, and how to charge by carload or by weight… Rule in favor of railroads, who refuse to \"grant lower rates on cotton in carloads of 45,000 pounds or more.\" http://bit.ly/cQsNgy",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1939,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "tool;handy",
"secondary": "american;love",
"quote": "Similarly a romancer who had a cynical turn might foreshadow the collapse of Wester civilization, and call it The Triumph of the Gadget. In all probability the emergence of the gadget has had a vast deal to do with the degenerative process. During the last fifty years there has been invented almost every conceivable labor-saving device, with the consequence that the average man is in a state of utter manual incompetence. This is well-known and is often commented upon. But what is not so often observed in that these gadgets are not only labor-saving but brain-saving, thought-saving; and it seems an inescapable conclusion that a correlative mental incompetence is being induced. / A certain amount of resistance seems necessary for the proper functioning of mental and moral attributes, as it is for that of physical attributes. In any of these three departments of life, if you can get results without effort, and habitually do so, the capacity for making the effort dwindles. Whatever takes away the opportunity for effort, whatever obviates or reduces the need for making it, is therefore to some degree deleterious. It needs a bit of brains to manage a furnace-fire successfully; an automatic heater needs none; hence many householders today could not manage a furnace-fire to save their lives",
"author": " Nock, Albert Jay",
"title": "The State of the Union: The Triumph of the Gadget",
"source": "The American Mercury. v47n187. July 1939.",
"notes": "One of the first sources to describe gadgets as a particularly American phenomenon. In an argument anticipating McLuhan's extensions and amputations language in \"The Gadget Lover,\" Nock writes: \"Animals have organs which, on account of changes in their environment, they no longer use, turn into a species which has only vestigial remnants or rudimentary forms of these organs, sometimes amounting to no more than mere vague suggestions, like the os coccygis in human beings, which vaguely suggests a remote ancestral tail. There is much in 'the course of modern civilization' which strongly intimates that this may be happening to the mental and moral powers of Western man. The trouble with arm-chair-and-push-button Utopias like the one so attractively sketched for us by H.G. Wells, is that they carry brain-saving to the point of complete disuse. … Americans are the world's foremost gadget-users, and unquestionably the leisure gained in this way is used chiefly for further brain-saving--a substitution of play-gadgets for work-gadgets; motion-pictures, automobiles, radio-music, as an alternative to adding-machines, price-lists, fireless cookers.\" ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1948,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "tool;instrument",
"secondary": "wrinkle",
"quote": "The homely Philadelphian, often treated by historians as a politician with a spare-time interest in gadgets, was actually one of the great experimental scientists. […] It is often said that Franklin' was typically American in his approach to science-a utilitarian interested in science chiefly, if not solely, because of its prac­tical applications. It is true that when he had discovered the action of pointed grounded conductors and proved that clouds are electrified, he applied these discoveries to the invention of the lightning rod. But he did not make these dis­coveries in order to invent a lightning rod! Franklin's inventions were of two kinds. One type was pure gadgetry; in this class were his inventions of bifocal glasses, which required no recondite knowledge of optical principles, and of a device for taking books down from the shelf without getting up from one's chair. The lightning rod, on the other hand, de­veloped from pure scientific research. If Franklin's approach to science had been strictly utilitarian, it is doubtful that he would ever have studied the subject of electricity at all. In the 18th century there was only one practical application of electricity, and that was the giving of electric shocks for therapeutic purposes, chiefly to cure paralysis.",
"author": "Cohen, I. Bernard",
"title": "In Defense of Benjamin Franklin",
"source": "Scientific American 179, (August 1948). p. 36-43",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1958,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool;instrument",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "With high electrical power one can generate extremely strong magnetic fields, but the difficulty is that such fields place severe strains on the coil, or solenoid, as it is called. A magnetic field can produce both mechanical and heat­ing effects. The mechanical effects are illustrated by a clever gadget known as Roguet's spiral. It is a suspended coil with its lower end dipping into a bowl of mercury. When a current passes through the coil, the magnetic field around the loops causes the adjacent turns of the coil to be attracted to each other while the opposite sides of each loop repel each other.",
"author": "Furth, Harold P., Morton A. Levine, Ralph W. Waniek",
"title": "Strong Magnetic Fields",
"source": "Scientific American 198, (February 1958). p. 28-33",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1942,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "tool;misc",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "…metal parts, have been added many small 'gadgets' of abrasive cloth--little devices for use on portable and flexible shaft machines. In many cases they do in seconds what used to require minutes by hand methods…",
"author": " Sidford, A.J.",
"title": "Abrasive Cloth Gadgets Speed War Work",
"source": "Products Finishing. vol. 7. 1942. p. 26",
"notes": "The strangeness of a soft gadget.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1949,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "tool;need",
"secondary": "definition; trivial, month",
"quote": "A gadget is a device for doing something that nobody knew needed doing until a gadget was invented to do it. As Actor Clifton Webb found out, discovering what a new gadget actually does is not always easy. When Don Davis of the Gadget-of-the-Month Club of Los Angeles, Calif., which sends a gimmick monthly to half a million subscribers, handed Webb the enigmatic tubular gizmo shown here, Webb was nonplused. Nevertheless he accepted the challenge of figuring out what it was. For 20 minutes he struggled manfully to make it do something useful without ever tumbling to its real purpose. He twisted it and turned it, applying it to various parts of his anatomy with no success. Finaly he even tried to make it fit his dog. Then, baffled and frustrated, he gave up. But Webb did learn the doodad's proper use eventually, just as can anyone else by turning the page.\" … \"It's a bathtub cane to prevent oldsters, cripples and cautious people from slipping. Impressed with what he saw, Webb wanted one for his mother.",
"author": "",
"title": "Actor vs. Gadget: Clifton Webb discovers seven interesting uses for a strange new gimmick, none of them right ",
"source": "Life, Jan 31, 1949.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1922,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "tool;placeholder",
"secondary": "trivial;nautical",
"quote": "I think that many an officer, when he first studies the mooring board at the Naval Academy, or rather when he is supposed to study it, is at once impressed with its resemblance to a huge spider web, contrived by the devilish ingenuity of man for the purpose of hopelessly enmeshing the poor fly--which is himself. […] In either case, if the ship has to shift berth, the tendency is to damn the mooring board as an impracticable 'gadget,' and to fail to criticize the manner of its use. Thus when it comes to a consideration of the less obvious manuvering problems, he is prone to dismiss the whole matter with the assertion tha, like the Peace of God, it 'passeth all understanding.' […] When speaking of mooring board problems, I think not so much of the board itself as of the kind of work involved. Such problems may be worked out on the actual board, or in many cases on a chart, or perhaps on some kind of specially contrived 'gadget.' […] I have a gadget I use for maneuvering problems instead of the printed forms, locally known as the 'Wegee Board,' because it is supposed to predict the future and explain the past. It is a sheet of white celluloid with an 18\"circle on it graduated in degrees. At the center is the point of a thumb tack inserted from the bottom side and filed down till it barely projects above the board.",
"author": "Stiles, Commander William C.I",
"title": "Some Uses and Misuses of the Mooring Board",
"source": " v48n7. July 1922.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1940,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "tool;placeholder",
"secondary": "trivial;definition;british",
"quote": "What an odd little word 'gadget' is, almost a gadget in itself, so small and useful. Its origin is obscure and is believed not to appear in print before 1886. Yet it is not, as might be though, an Americanism. It appears as an expression used chiefly by seamen, meaning any small tool, contrivance, or piece of mechanism not dignified by any specific name; a what-not, in fact; a chicken-fixing, a gill-guy, a timmey-noggy, a wim-wom. I commend these agreeable synonyms to Mr. Clarence Elliott's notice, and at the same time record my gratitude for his revival of that other sea-0faring word, manavlins. I wonder how many English-speaking people are familiar with its meaning?\" (197). \"I mistrust gadgets, generally speaking. They seldom work. The proved, old-fashioned tool is usually better and it is safer to stick to it. I thus make a rule of throwing all tempting catalogues of gardening gadgets straight into the waste-paper basket, not daring to examine them first, because I know that if I examine them I shall fall. It will mean only that I shall with some trouble obtain a postal order for 10s. 6d., to acquire an object which will speedily join similar objects rusting in the tool shed. It should be clear from this that my mistrust of gadgets is equalled only by my weakness for them, and that no amount of experience can make me find them anything but irresistible\" (196). Among her favorite gadgets: \"Then there is the long narrow trowel of stainless steel and it s associate the two-pronged hand fork, both unrivaled for weeding in between small plants, though perhaps there is no tool so well adapted for this purpose as the old table knife with the stump of a broken plaid.\" (196) But the \"perfect gadget\" is the \"widger\" -- \"the neatest, slimmest, and cheapest of all gadgets to carry in the pocket. Officially the widget is Patent No. 828793, but it owes (I believe) its more personal name to the ingenuity of Mr. Clarence Elliott, whose racy gardening style ought to be more widely appreciated. He invented the widger, its name, and the verb to wig, which, although not exactly onomatopoeic, suggests very successfully the action of prising up--you wig up a weed, or wig up a caked bit of soil for the purpose of aerating it--all very necessary operations which before the arrival of the widget were sometimes awkward to perform. This small sleek object, four inches long, slides into the pocket, no more cumbersome than a pencil, and may be put to many uses. Screwdriver, toothpick, letter-opener, widger, it fulfils [sic] all functions throughout the day. Its creator, Mr. Elliot, I observe, spells it sometimes with a 'y': wydger, no doubt on the analogy of Blake's Tyger, just to make it seem more unusual. Whatever the spelling, it is the perfect gadget\" (197). Next chapter, \"Tool-shed\": \"Different from gadgets are the time-honored tools which hang in the dusty brown twilight of the tool-shed when their day's work is done. The wood of their handles is as tawny as the arms of men who use them: the have a sun-burnt air. The steel of spuds, forks, and trowels glistens quietly as though it were resting; it has been in contact with the earth all day, and recalls the old expedient of plunging a dirty knife-blade into the soil and withdrawing it restored to a brightness like the flash of Excalibur. The prongs of forks are burnished as bayonets, the curve of hooks gleaming as sabers. The big wooden trudges repose peacefully across the handles of the barrow. The long handles of rakes and hoes dangle in rows, symmetrical as Uccello's lances. There is a shelf with all the odd accumulation of labels, green string, hedging-gloves, old tobacco tins full of saved seeds. A hank of yellow bass hangs from a nail, blond as corn. The flower-pots are piled, tier upon tier, red as a robin's breast. Red and brown, green and golden, steely as armor, dusty as snuff, the tool-shed deepens in shadow as the respite of evening shuts the door and leaves the small interior to the mouse\" (199).",
"author": "West-Sackville, Victoria",
"title": "Gadgets",
"source": " Country Notes. Harper & Brothers: 1940",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1909,
"decade": 1900,
"primary": "tool;propername",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "The smooth patch, together with paper or tin bags properly marked, I am quite sure would preserve the identity of each bale of cotton from the time it leaves the compress until it reaches the factory; and in the case of the tin tag this would be true though every particle of the covering should be torn from the bale in transit. The tin tag in its present shape can not be used successfully on cotton banded with Churchill patented wire-tying machine, the 'Gadget,' but it would no doubt be made to conform to the new system. When the 'Gadget' comes into general use cotton would be so much more mercifully handled by stevedores in breaking out at destination port that the smooth patch and the paper bag will likely be found to accomplish the end aimed at.",
"author": "",
"title": "Atlanta Topic--1900",
"source": "Compilation of Convention Topics: American Association of Local Freight Agents' Associations 412",
"notes": "question: \"What tally system or plan will overcome errors incident to handling cotton in and out of car, and in and out of storage warehouse?\" Answer, from a report in 1901",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1916,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "tool;propername",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "There seems to be, or have been, three devices for accomplishing this result, i.e.: 1st, The Churchill 'Gadget.' 2nd, The new Nesbit 'Standard' Compress. 3rd, The Webb High Density Attachment. The first (Churchill 'Gadget') does not seem to be actively offered and is apparently not a live prospect. The second (Nesbitt Press) is a new style of compress, the process of which differs somewhat from the compress in general use. They ahve one or two plants in experimental operation. The third (Webb High Density Attachment) is intended for use in connection with their regular compresses. The Webb compress is in general use and their attachment is in successful operation at a number of places.",
"author": "",
"title": "",
"source": "Proceedings of Transportation and Car Accounting Officers. Ansley Hotel, Atlanta, GA. December 12-13, 1916. p.4684",
"notes": "Twenty-sixth regular meeting. On question of high density freight",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1922,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "tool;propername",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Finally, there is the 'gadget,' which is employed when insufficient fall [gravitational momentum] is available, in order to push the packages along.\" (209) \"The 'Gadget.' -- A 'gadget' is illustrated in Figs. 302 to 304 (Rownson, Drew, & Clydesdale's patent). This device comes into play principally when a sufficient gradient for a gravity runway is unobtainable, and where, therefore, a very slight incline or even a level path, has to be chosen. A 'gadget' may likewise be used for an uphill gradient for stacking purposes (see Fig. 305), or it may take the place of a 'humper'; generally speaking, a 'gadget' will push a steady stream of cases for about 200 ft. on a level path. This device is made 8 ft. long in order that it may replace an 8-ft. section of a runway without necessitiating any rearrangement of the rest of the lay-out. The machine consists of an angle frame which may stand on a level floor in case of a stationary installation, or may be mounted on wheels for a portable lay-out; it totally elcloses the elctro-motor and the propelling device. […] It would not be practicable for the 'gadget' to push cases round the corner; the path must always be in a straight line. If angles have to be negotiated, this must be done on a gravity run after the cases leave, independently of the pushing influence of the 'gadget.'",
"author": "Zimmer, George Frederick",
"title": "he Mechanical Handling and Storing of Material: Being a Treatise on the Automatic and Semi-Automatic Handling and Storing of Commericial Products.",
"source": "p. 213-215",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1922,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "tool;propername",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Now here is a little gadget which should be in every home--I mean plotting room. It is small and inexpensive, if your [sic] don't have to make or buy it yourself, and helps out the plotter like a brother should--but doesn't",
"author": "Bunker, Major Paul D",
"title": "A Range Corrector",
"source": "The Coast Artillery Journal. v57n4. October, 1922",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1953,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "tool;propername",
"secondary": "love",
"quote": " Down to earth values from Gadget Heaven; gifts & gadgets for home & garden. Fall 1953 A104487 ",
"author": "",
"title": "Gadget Heaven",
"source": "Catalog of Copyright Entires. Third Series: 1953: July-December. Library of Congress Copyright Office. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1948,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "tool;raygun",
"secondary": "month;patent",
"quote": "More than 400,000 Americans are shelling out from one to five dollars apiece to dip their hands into a ly, mail-order grab bag. What will come out each month no one knows until the wrapping is off. All they know is that it will be some gadget representing the latest mechanical effort to make life a little easier, safer, or more fun. / What they get depends on whether they have sent in $1.00 for a six-month trial or $5.00 for a year's subscription to a dozen bigger and better gadgets. It may be a comb with a removable wick in its base, a powder fire extinguisher that doesn't deteriorate, or a window-sash burglar alarm. / The gadgets are selected and distributed by the Gadget-of-the-Month Club, Los Angeles, Calif. Anyone can submit an item for distribution. There are only three requirements: it must be new, must be patented or patent-applied-for, and must never have been distributed nationally. A jury screens out the best bets, which are then sampled by 15,000 members of the Consumers' Testing League.\" a different list for men and women, \"since the men would hardly go for kitchen gimcracks, and the ladies could not be expected to rave about a razor guaranteed to shave under the nose.\" … \"Springing from the desire of 23 manufacturers to find customers for war-developed items, the club was organized in 1943. Now the National Inventors Assn. and the national Gadgets Mfg. Assn. are joining with the club to stage a National Gadget Week in late April. They plan to establish a community in California called 'Gadgetville,' where inventors can live and perfect their ideas. In addition, 'gadget nooks' will be placed in retail stores across the nation, with a new item featured every week. The nation will become more gadget-conscious than ever if these enterprising gadgeteers have their way.",
"author": "Boone, Andrew R.",
"title": "Gadget Grab Bag",
"source": "Popular Science. March 1948. p. 147",
"notes": "This marketplace for problems that need solving, functions that need fulfilling, just screams, \"There's an app for that.\" See page in same issue on what gadgets people would like to see. App as the contemporary paradigm of gadget. From later in the issue, more about \"war-born gadgets\": Greit, Karl. \"Weather Vane Shows Wind on Indoor Dial.\" \"Two Selsyn motors will do the job. When several of these war-born gadgets are properly wired in the same circuit, rotating the shaft of one will cause the shafts of the others to turn in exactly the same degree.\" (181) Popular Science seems to become largely a compendium of gadgetry at this point--with the following sections--home mechanics & handicraft; mechanics and shopcraft; inventions. ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1948,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "tool;raygun",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "A new gadget enables a mother to give a child a shampoo without danger of getting soap in its eyes and consequently without the usual session of struggle and tears. With this contraption the child reclines in a comfortable position while its mother has both hands free to do the shampooing. The gadget can be placed on the kitchen drainboard, or in or over a bath tub.",
"author": "Jones, Hilton Ira",
"title": "Peeps at Things to Come",
"source": "The Rotarian. Mar 1948",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1899,
"decade": 1890,
"primary": "vehicle",
"secondary": "british",
"quote": "\"Gadget\": A trial recently took place at Bristol (as reported in the Bristol Times and Mirror of 10 June) for damage done to a 'gadget.' The word does not occur in Halliwell, Smyth's 'Sailor's Word-Book,' or the 'H.E.D.' It evidently is the name of some kind of boat, which in the present case was used for the discharge of vessels in the harbour. Can any correspondent kindly give an exact definition, and also suggest its history and probable derivation? Is it local, or an importaiton, or a new coinage?",
"author": "W.F.R.",
"title": "Notes and Queries ",
"source": "s9-III: 488",
"notes": "First query on the term in Notes and Queries.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1927,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "vehicle",
"secondary": "nautical",
"quote": "",
"author": "Green, Fitzhugh",
"title": "Black Death: A Naval Officer's Vivid Story Revealing Inside Workings of a Submarine",
"source": "Popular Science, June 1927.",
"notes": "\"gadget\" is a \"cylinder\" invented by a Doctor aboard the ship which can send several men up to the surface while withstanding the water pressure at those depths (no mention of the bends). Here the word names an entire craft.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1928,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "vehicle;propername",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Their transport was a weird six-wheeled automobile that traveled on a roadbed of wire netting. While one roll was stretched in front of the car, another was being picked up behind it. […] The wheels of their homemade six-wheeled car, which they named a 'gadget,' were equipped with flat wooden tires, thirty inches wide. Steering was done by braking on first one wheel and then the other.",
"author": "",
"title": "A New Highway for an Old Empire",
"source": "Popular Mechanics. Oct 1928. p. 627-8",
"notes": "on pioneer surveyors staked out in the Florida Everglades",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1931,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "wrinkle",
"secondary": "definition",
"quote": "If technique is, as Mark Twain suggested, doing something simple in a complicated way, then a wrinkle suggests the reverse of this; that is, a simple method of doing something complicated. If a botanist requires several complex solutions to stain certain fibbers, that is technique. Another botanist's suggestion that he would get the same result with a drop of marking ink is a wrinkle.",
"author": "",
"title": "Wrinkles and Gadgets",
"source": "Watson's Microscope Record. Issues 22-38. 1931",
"notes": "FIND THIS",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1938,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "wrinkle",
"secondary": "definition;retro",
"quote": "But if a gadget is a machine, an invention, a mechanical means of achieving a result, a wrinkle is a method of procedure. Again our lexicographer, rating the word as colloquial, one step higher than slang, describes it as 'a curious or ingenious notion; happy thought.' I will accept that phrase 'happy thought' as particularly pat. But to the seaman, a gadget is a thing, and a wrinkle is a method, and both of them for most part unusual and unstandardized.\" (viii)) / That a gadget is a solution that arises naturally out of the materials of the ship -- similar to distinction made in US Court of Appeals case on the difference between a gadget and an invention: \"In the long centuries in which men have sailed the seas, they have faced and solved oft-recurring problems. When these problems present themselves on every passage and on every tack, the means of solving them are built right into the ship or her rigging. ut when, as so often occurs, the problem arises out of some unusual situation, the sailor is forced to turn inventor. He calls upon all his ingenuity. He summons to his aid his past experience with the solution of some similar problem. And perhaps he remembers, with that strange race memory which is often mis-called instinct, some similar experience of a sea-going ancestor.\" / \"Our lexicographers define a gadget as 'anything the name of which cannot be recalled at the moment,' and in parentheses, they add (Slang, U.S. Navy.) But the name has a broader meaning and a riper antiquity than the dictionary credits. I believe the term is older than the navy itself, ad far too deeply imbedded in the language to merit the transitory stigma of slang. A landsman's synonyms for gadget are thing-um-bob, widget, what-do-yer-call-it, do-funny. A sailor's synonym is gilhickey, although a purist would make a distinction by never using the term gilhickey except to distinguish one gadget from another. The first gadget is the gadget. The second gadget in any situation in which two appear is the gilhickey.\" (viii) / The temporality/longevity/life-span of a gadget--\"But it must not be considered that the term is applied merely as a temporary substitute for an object's true name. Most of the unusual things about a ship go nameless forever. When an invention becomes so standardized that it acquires a name, it ceases to be a gadget except for those brief periods when its distinguishing name is forgotten. But there are thousands of unusual things about a ship or a yacht that were born gadgets and will remain gadgets as long as they are used. They are the inventions that solve the rare problems, the machines that are unnecessary on most vessels and at most times and are therefore nameless.\" That at any moment, a gadget could become a wrinkle and vice versa--the difference between a tool and a procedure is not readily identifiable: \"I have been sore put to it to organize this book. For I am dealing with concepts that have thus far resisted organization so well that they have avoided being tagged with names. Also it is pretty hard to tell where a gadget begins and a wrinkle ends or vice versa. Take a familiar example. You are about to tie two lines together. You tie them into a weaver's knot. Standard practice so far--no gadgets, no wrinkles. The nrealizing that ther eis going to be a terrific strain on that line and that the knot will be pulled so tight that you will never be able to untie it again, you decide to slip a toggle into the knot. That's a happy thought, for you can always take a hammer and drive out the toggle and the knot will be loose. What is that toggle--a winkle or a gadget? Now suppose we decide that the strain is going to be so great that it will be difficult to drive out an ordinary toggle. So we use a large fid whose sloping shape assures us that the slightest driving with the hammer will loosen the knot. Is the wrinkle now a gadget? Or if the small end of the fid is greased to make it slip more easily through the the tight turns of the knot, does it become a wrinkle again? I don't know and I don't pretend to try to find out. The line of demarkation is too indistinct. So I shall write about gadgets and wrinkles without worrying much about branding them with their proper names.",
"author": "Calahan, Harold Augustin",
"title": "",
"source": "Gadgets and Wrinkles: A Compendium of Man's Ingenuity at Sea. 1938. ",
"notes": "Dedicated to his father, Edward A. Calahan, \"whose great gadgets, the stock ticker, the messenger boy call box, and the multiplex telegraph, annihilated time and space.\" Each chapter of the book begins with a \"problem\" and is followed by a series of gadgets and wrinkles that solve that problem. ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1950,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "wrinkle",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "In every real woodman's kit you'll find them--gadgets or doodads or wrinkles, or whatever you want to call them. They won't be big, nor will there be many of them. But through experience, some camper has proved they will make life in the out-of-doors more enjoyable.\" \"A firebug is simple to make and about the handiest thing imaginable. With the help of one of these efficient little pyromaniacs you can't miss with a fire, even in a downpour. The firebug will give you six minutes of hot flame. Just wrap two feet of thick string around seven matches and dip into warm paraffin.",
"author": "",
"title": "Woodmen's Wrinkles: Every outdoorsman has some simple gadgets to make life in the woods easier",
"source": " Boys' Life. May 1950.",
"notes": "PIC",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1952,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "wrinkle",
"secondary": "definition;patent",
"quote": "Appellee-plaintiffs sued for the infringement of three patents relating to steering gear idler arm assemblies of automobiles. Appellants-defendants,2 asserted that the patents were invalid because of lack of invention and that there was no infringement. The trial court upheld validity, found and enjoined infringement, and ordered an accounting. Later Jamco was found to be in contempt for violation of the injunction. […] [gadgetry as commonsense solution to a problem:] Jamco asserts that these devices do not constitute invention, were anticipated by the prior art, and at the most show only mechanical improvements which should have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art. […] The crucial issue is whether 'the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains.' […] The dividing line between what results from mechanical ability and what displays inventive genius is ill-defined. Perhaps no hard and fast definitive rule can or should be established. We have here combination patents utilizing such well and commonly known elements as bearings, grease seals, washers, bushings, nuts and bolts. In Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Supermarket Equipment Corp., 340 U.S. 147, 151, and 152, 71 S.Ct. 127, 129, 95 L.Ed. 162, it was said that 'the concept of invention is inherently elusive when applied to combination of old elements' and that 'courts should scrutinize combination patent claims with a care proportioned to the difficulty and improbability of finding invention in an assembly of old elements.' […] Recognizing that patentability is a question of law for the court,13 we cannot say that here there is a gadget as opposed to an invention. Certainly in a particular environment, the steering mechanism of motor vehicles, the peculiar and difficult problem of stabilizing that mechanism and protecting if from undue wear is solved in an expert, inexpensive and effective manner which attains an improved result. If the distinctive arrangement of the known elements would be apparent to a skilled mechanic, such fact is established neither by an examination of the devices nor by the evidence adduced at the trial. From the record presented to us the novel and distinctive combinations which make up the three patents in question require 'greater skill and higher thought than would be expected of an ordinary mechanic trained in the art.'14 In the circumstances, Jamco has not sustained the burden of overcoming the presumption of validity by clear and convincing evidence.",
"author": "",
"title": "",
"source": "United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit",
"notes": "http://bit.ly/9Z6Q7C. DEFINITION OF A GADGET VS. AN INVENTION, THE FORMER IS 'THE' SOLUTION THAT LOGICALLY EMERGES FROM A PROBLEM IN MATERIAL FORM, AS A KIND OF TOOL OR EXPEDIENT",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1957,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "wrinkle",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Turning out clean and accurate work is the aim of every craftsman. In addition to hand skills, the average fellow rigs up all kinds of gimmicks and gadgets to help him with his work. Sometimes it's how you do a job that makes the difference between the craftsman and the sloppy workman. Here are seven different gimmicks, gadgets, and 'how-to's' that will give you suggestions for doing a few jobs easier and better.\" \"Use a block of wood when you want to line up two pieces accurately for gluing or nailing. Block holds surfaces [sic] absolutely flush and even.\" \"Sanding small pieces is easiest if you move the work to the sandpaper. Fasten a sheet of fine garnet paper to a piece of wood with tacks.",
"author": "Collins, Ted",
"title": "To Do Work Easier and Better, Try These Workshop Wrinkles & Gadgets",
"source": "Boys' Life. Oct 1957. p. 97",
"notes": "PIC",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1975,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "wrinkle",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Try to conceive of the quantity of energy being wasted throughout the country by pilot lights on stoves burning 24 hours a day. Then hearken to this suggestion: Extinguish all pilot lights and seal them. As a substitute for them I remember my grandmother used a gadget, which to the best of my recollection is called a match.",
"author": "",
"title": "Letters",
"source": "New York Times. 10 July 1975. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1950,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "wrinkle; misc",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Well, I do it thisaway. The glass rotates while the template slides over it, back and forth. The linkage keeps the template always vertical. Throw on the abrasive and both glass and template automatically go paraboloid, the only curve we know of that can be made that way. Starting, say, with a hemisphere, or any segment of a sphere, and a thin, circular template, you can keep going and get any focal length you want. Of course, the above is a convex paraboloid but it works equally well on a concave one. / The reason why this gadget works this way lies in the equation of the pa­raboloid and the fact that every section cut from a paraboloid, like a, b, c, d, e, is a parabola and all are identical.",
"author": "Ingalls, Albert G.",
"title": "The Amateur Astronomer",
"source": "Scientific American 183, (October 1950). p.60-63 ",
"notes": "On asked how do sculpt a convex lens.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1909,
"decade": 1900,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "definition",
"quote": "",
"author": "Hospitalier, E. ",
"title": "Vocabulaire français-anglais-allemand: technique, industrielle, et commercial",
"source": "",
"notes": "Translates \"Gadget\" as \"Dispositif.\" ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1918,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "",
"author": "",
"title": "The Gadget, United States Naval Training Camp, Gulfport, Mississippi. for the Benefit of the Athletic Association",
"source": "Issued by The Gadget Staff. 1918. ",
"notes": "yearbook",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1918,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "definition",
"quote": "GADGET, dispositif (m) [servant à un usage quelconque.",
"author": "de Gramont, Armand Antoine Agénor",
"title": "The Aviator's Pocket Dictionary and Table-Book, French-English and English-French",
"source": "New York: Brentano's. 1918",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1919,
"decade": 1910,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "definition",
"quote": "As a born Cockney, living close to London every minute of my life, I had not noticed the slow change in the face and soul of London. […] The young men having gone to war, the streets were filled with middle-aged women of thirty, in short skirts, trying to attract the aged satyrs, the only men that remained, by pretending to be little girls. […] The common Cockney seemed to walk almost fearfully about his invaded streets, hardly daring to be himself or talk his own language. apart from the foreign tongues, which always did annoy his ear, foul language now assailed him from every side: 'no bon,' 'napoo,' 'gadget,' 'camouflaged,' 'buckshee,' 'bonza,' and so on. This is not good slang. Good slang has a quality of its own--a bite and spit and fine expressiveness which do not belong to dictionary words. That is its justification--the supplying of a lacking shade of expression, not the supplanting of adequate forms. The old Cockney slang did justify itself, but this modern army rubbish, besides being uncouth, is utterly meaningless, and might have been invented by some idiot schoolboy: probably was.",
"author": "Burke, Thomas",
"title": "Out and About London",
"source": "p. 8-9",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1921,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "And even then I was forced to stretch one leg out so far that I kicked a little gadget on a box arrangement on the dashboard, which apparently stopped the engine.\" [george blames it on him, says he did it on purpose.] \"As if I, with no mechanical instinct whatever, knew what was in that box! I don't know even now, and I have got my driver's license.",
"author": "Benchley, Robert",
"title": "Of All Things",
"source": "New York: Henry Holt and Company. 1921. p. 54",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1922,
"decade": 1920,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "definition",
"quote": "AFFUTIAU, sb. m. 1. trinket, article of adornment. Les jeunes filles aiment les affutiaux, girls are fond of titivating. Des affutiaux comme en aiment les jeunes paysannes, just the sort of fal-lals peasent girls like. 2. Thing, gadget. Je ne sais plus le nom de cet affutiau, I don't remember the name of that gadget.",
"author": "Leroy, Oliver",
"title": "",
"source": "Leroy, Oliver",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1934,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "ad; trivial",
"quote": "Not a 'Gadget': REO self-shifter. As vital as self-starter; a safer, simpler means of driving. The lure of many strange devices has been held out to automobile buyers in the last few years. Gadget after gadget has taken its place in the parade of expedients. It is therefore understandable why some buyers have been confused--have found it difficult to distinguish between a gadget and a genuine improvement. Yet there is a simple way of telling. Try any device you have in mind and see how much actual difference it makes in the operation of a car. Then take the wheel of the Self-Shifting Reo. HERE is something FUNDAMENTAL! No gearshift lever -- gearshifting automatic -- innumerable cluth operations saved -- driving made 33 1/3% easier and SAFER!",
"author": "",
"title": "Not a 'Gadget'",
"source": "Popular Science. Sept 1934",
"notes": "advertisement for REO Motor Car Co., Lansing, Mich's Self-Shifter",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1936,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "trivial;definition",
"quote": "In reading through \"the glossy pages of a large and costly monthly\" magazine… \"In absorbed fascination I read these slyly contrived proffering of wares, and I became aware as I read these slyly contrived profferings of wares, and I became aware, as I read, that almost all the advertised products--although as physically various as ice-boxes and pens, underwear and cigar-lighters--had a certain common aspect. Almost all of them, in a word, were gadgets. / A gadget is not easy to define. It is a kind of what's or thingumabob or dingus--all these excellent slang words being themselves, alas, rather nebulous and indefinable. The fact that it is indefinable may be, I suspect, the clue to the gadget's nature. The gadget, in short, is a gadget; which is to say that it is not definable in terms of its relation to the real life and basic pursuits of man. A 'hat' we may define; it is an object to keep the human head warm or dry or shaded or otherwise comfortable. We may readily enough define food or drink or books or houses. But the gadget…\" (590) * * * \"I hear complaints and repinings now and again that in this age philosophy is dead. But I do not think so. There has simply been substituted, for other philosophies, the philosophy of the gadget. This philosophy is but materialism carried to a somewhat attenuated but entirely logical extreme. It is the ultimate, and rather pathetic, expression of acquisitiveness. […] We have deified gadgets, precisely as we have tended more and more to make material concerns for ultimates of our thinking. For that modern temper which delights 'to pay devout and uncritical obeisance to the analytic intelligence,' disclaiming every other human faculty of apprehension, and which--being beset by economic woes--is obsessed by economic criteria of values, and by those alone, it would be hard to find a more fitting symbol and insignia than The Gadget.\" \"That we seek to appease this gnawing sense of want and incompleteness by devising newer and queerer and more elaborate gadgets is not more ridiculous than sad. It is part of the flight from reality, or rather, perhaps, of the refusal to face reality steadfastly and with full realization.\" Goes to a \"dream of some day about the year 5000\" when archaeologists explore \"the subterranean ruins of a great twentieth-century city,\" uncovering miserable tabloids chronicling war, \"night clubs,\" and the horrors of… ::gasp:: stand up comedy! \"And then, in this dream, I see the leader of the archaeological party pounce with delight upon a small object in the dust, and I hear him cry 'Here is their sacred talisman, the symbol of their religion!' and I see him hold up to his conferères a cigar-lighter with the recipes for eight cocktails printed on it, and with a fountain-pen at one end of it and a flashlight at the other.",
"author": "Devoe, Alan",
"title": "Gadgets",
"source": "Catholic World. August, 1936. p. 590-1",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1938,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "definition",
"quote": "It must have been from some such beginning that 'gadgets' were born.",
"author": "",
"title": "",
"source": "Better Food. vol. 43. 1938? 9?",
"notes": "FIND THIS",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1938,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Triumph of the Gadgets",
"author": "Pratt, Fletcher",
"title": "",
"source": "The Navy, A History: The Story of a Service in Action. (1938). Ch. 2",
"notes": "chapter title",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1939,
"decade": 1930,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "retro;cybernetics",
"quote": "He then introduced Vannevar Bush '15, President of the carnegie Institution and a former Vice-President of the Institute. / Dr. Bush talked on gadgets and gadgeteers, stating that they dated from Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. He described the telephone as one of the gadgets now fully developed. 'For a long time,' he said,' we all thought that…",
"author": "",
"title": "MIT Club of Toledo",
"source": "Technology Review. vol. 41. 1939. 130, 171 (and photo), 221, 385, 397, 410",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1940,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "retro",
"quote": "Ranging from crude clay cups used by the 'mound builders' to the latest sanitary nursing bottle, baby-feeding gadgets collected as a hobby by Dr. D. Edward Overton, of Garden City, N.Y., record 500 years of history.",
"author": "",
"title": "Baby-Feeding Gadgets Form Odd Collection.",
"source": " Popular Science. July 1940. p. 109",
"notes": "img http://bit.ly/cB3CYj",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1944,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "retro",
"quote": "",
"author": "Evands, Idrisyn Oliver",
"title": "Gadget City: A Story of Ancient Alexandria",
"source": "F. Warne & Co. 1944. ",
"notes": "FIND THIS. author of Jules Verne and His Work (1966), Sensible Sun-Bathing (1935), Cigarette Cards, and How to Collect Them (1937), and The World of To-Morrow: A Junior Book of Forecasts (1933).",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1945,
"decade": 1940,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "american",
"quote": "…hanging curtains, taking off storm windows and putting in screens--and enjoying all the gadgets she can lay hands on. Incidentally, Europeans are not clever with these gadgets\" (45). \"Besides learning about institutions and gadgets there had been much to learn about offices and titles and organizations.",
"author": "Barsschak, Erna",
"title": "My American Adventure",
"source": "My American Adventure. Washburn. 1945. ",
"notes": "FIND THIS Firestone Online",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1950,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "definition;patent",
"quote": "The attempts through the years to get a broader, looser conception of patents than the Constitution contemplates have been persistent. The Patent Office, like most administrative agencies, has looked with favor on the opportunity which the exercise of discretion affords to expand its own jurisdiction. And so it has placed a host of gadgets under the armor of patents -- gadgets that obviously have had no place in the constitutional scheme of advancing scientific knowledge. A few that have reached this Court show the pressure to extend monopoly to the simplest of devices: Hotchkiss v. Greenwood, 11 How. 248: doorknob made of clay, rather than metal or wood, where different shaped door knobs had previously been made of clay. Rubber-Tip Pencil Co. v. Howard, 20 Wall. 498: rubber caps put on wood pencils to serve as erasers. Union Paper Collar Co. v. Van Dusen, 23 Wall. 530: making collars of parchment paper where linen paper and linen had previously been used. Page 340 U. S. 157 Brown v. Piper, 91 U. S. 37: a method for preserving fish by freezing them in a container operating in the same manner as an ice cream freezer. Reckendorfer v. Faber, 92 U. S. 347: inserting a piece of rubber in a slot in the end of a wood pencil to serve as an eraser. Dalton v. Jennings, 93 U. S. 271: fine thread placed across open squares in a regular hairnet to keep hair in place more effectively. Double-Pointed Tack Co. v. Two Rivers Mfg. Co., 109 U. S. 117: putting a metal washer on a wire staple.\" etc. etc. \"The patent involved in the present case belongs to this list of incredible patents which the Patent Office has spawned. The fact that a patent as flimsy and as spurious as this one has to be brought all the way to this Court to be declared invalid dramatically illustrates how far our patent system frequently departs from the constitutional standards which are supposed to govern.",
"author": "",
"title": "",
"source": "A. & P. Tea Co. v. Supermarket Corp., 340 U.S. 147 (1950). U.S. Supreme Court",
"notes": "Argued Oct 18-19, 1950, decided Dec 4, 1950. opinion delivered by Justice Robert H. Jackson.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1950,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Its owners were mighty proud of their new gadgets. They were proud because their new gadgets were time-saving. Chaplin was horrified because they were also man- killing. The superiority of gadget to man, the slavery of man to gadget,…",
"author": "",
"title": "",
"source": "The Atlantic Monthly. vol. 185. 1950.",
"notes": "FIND THIS AP2 .A853 p. 28, 92, 90.",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1950,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Besides its many handsome diagrams and striking photographs, it possessed a side pocket containing a collapsible, multicolored dodecahedron (held to­gether by rubber bands which made it self-erecting when removed from its hid­ ing place), a set of motion-picture 'cards which when rapidly riffled displayed cer­tain geometrical laws, a pair of red and green Cagliostro spectacles which con­ferred three dimensions on the book's several anaglyphs, and a few other equally ingenious gadgets. Dr. Steinhaus' introduction was so modest and amiable as to disarm all criticism. \"You are right,\" he said, \"there is no system in this book; important things are omitted and trifles are emphasized. Many things do not deserve the name of mathematics, and the author himself does not seem to know what his aim really was in publish­ ing his 'mathematical snapshots.' They are too scientific for a child and too childish for a mathematician.\" Still, this was excessively modest. For Steinhaus succeeded not only in serving up a re­ past of mathematical objects \"as pecu­liar as the most exotic beast or bird,\" but his book, for all its grab-bag disorder and despite the fact that his morsels rarely more than tickled the appetite for the strange and wonderful, afforded an amazing display of the richness, the va­riety and especially the interrelatedness of mathematical thought. His snapshots had a dual role. They were often beau­tiful and fascinating in themselves and from that standpoint it was unnecessary to ask what they meant. Yet they were also pictorial representations of purely abstract relations possessing universal validity. Thus they could illumine for the thoughtful reader something of the nature of intellectual process-how we are able to interpret the physical world and make coherent and useful systems describing its behavior. The very mish­ mash quality of the book serves to carry out this purpose.",
"author": "",
"title": "Books: An Approach to Mathematics Through Some Diverting Mathematical Pictures",
"source": "Scientific American 183, (November 1950), p. 56-59 ",
"notes": "a review of Mathematical Snapshots by Hugo Steinhaus, Oxford UP",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1951,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "patent",
"quote": "If a machine, apparatus, process, tool, gadget is not within the stated 'constitutional scheme of advancing scientific knowledge' [quoting Justice Jackson in A&P decision], it is not deserving of patent protection. It does not matter that it is new or useful--or that it has promoted the progress of the 'useful arts'--or that it has added to human comfort or convenience--or that it has resulted in the investment of capital and the employment of labor--or in the addition of wealth. If it adds nothing 'to the total stock of knowledge,' its manufacture, sale or use should not be encouraged by the special inducement of a limited patent monopoly.",
"author": "Posnack, Emanuel R.",
"title": "The Judicial Erosion of Our Patent System: A Threat to Inventive Initiative",
"source": " American Bar Association Journal. May 1951. p. 357",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1951,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "cybernetics;american;definition",
"quote": "How much more Know-How is needed to make human life obsolete? Is there any known gadget for controlling a rampant Know-How? The lady in the ad has found a mechanic substitute for moral choice?\" \"As the ad implies, know-how is at once a technical and a moral sphere. It is a duty for a woman to love her husband and also to love that soap that will make her husband love her. It is a duty to be glamorous, cheerful, efficient, and, so far as possible, to run the home like an automatic factory. This ad also draws attention to the tendency of the modern housewife, after a premarital spell in the business world, to embrace marriage and children but not housework. Emotionally, she repudiates physical tasks with the same confection that she pursues hygiene. And so the ad promises her a means of doing physical work without hating the husband who has dragged her into household drudgery. / To purchase gadgets that relieve this drudgery and thus promote domestic affection is, therefore, a duty, too. And so it is that not only labor-saving appliances but food and nylons ('your legs owe it to their audience') are consumed and promoted with moral fervor. / But gadgets and gimmicks did not begin as physical objects, nor are they only to be understood as such today. Benjamin Franklin, protean prototype and professor of know-how, is equally celebrated for both his material and psychological technology. In his Autobiography, still a central feature of Yankee moral structure, he tells, for example, how he hit upon a system of moral bookkeeping which would enable any man to achieve perfection in several months. The trick is to select only one fault at a time for deletion and by concentration and persistence the moral slate will soon be clean. Related to this system was his discovery of various techniques for winning friends and influencing people which are still as serviceable as ever.",
"author": "McLuhan, Marshall",
"title": "Chapter \"Know-How.\"",
"source": "The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. New York: The Vanguard Press, Inc p. 32",
"notes": " On an ad, \"How to iron shirts without hating your husband!\" ",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1953,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "\"…he has been able to learn something--some mechanical device, some ingenious method of overcoming a difficulty, some mining practice which while common in one country is unknown in others. The tips and gadgets described in this book area selection of these practices…",
"author": "Spalding, Jack",
"title": "Mining Tips and Gadgets",
"source": "Mining Publications. 1953. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1953,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "bomb",
"quote": "The Soviet thermonuclear explosion of August 12 may have been 'weak,' i.e., compared the first 'thermonuclear experiment' at Eniwetok in 1951, rather than to th full-fledged explosion achieved on November 1, 1952; and the latter itself may have been the try-out of an earth-bound 'gadget' rather than of a deliverable thermonuclear bomb. It needs, however, little optimism--if optimism be the right word--to predict that the 'gadget' will soon be converted into an H-bomb capable of delivery by a bomber, and that a Soviet H-bomb will follow the American without much delay.",
"author": "Rabinowitch, Eugene",
"title": "The Narrowing Way",
"source": "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Oct 1953. ",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": ""
},
{
"year": 1954,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "definition;patent;bomb",
"quote": "In the A&P case, Justice Douglas writes a concurring opinion in which he speaks scornfully of simple 'gadgets,' not worthy of patents, and implies that the atomic bomb was a great invention. Perhaps courts, so far as possible, should leave mechanical theories to mechanics and engineers and theories on science to scientists. There is always the chance that what may appear a subtle mechanical theory to a jurist may be obvious to even an apprentice, or what may appear to be sound science to him may be foolish to even a freshman in science.\" \"parable of the raft of two logs\" \"When the raft of two logs rested on the surface of the water, two natural forces were at work upon each log. The force of gravity acting upon each log held it down upon the water and its buoyancy, responding to the law of displaced liquids, held it up. When some force acted to overturn the raft, these two natural forces were brought into conflict, because either one log would have to rise against the law of gravity, or one would have to sink against the law of displaced liquids, before the raft could overturn. To the extent that the two forces acted against each other, an entire new force, stability, wasp resent in the raft. / For good or evil, great as the invention of the atomic bomb may have been, the general invention produced no new force; it only released forces already present in nature. / The chieftain may only have produced a 'gadget' in the raft, but it still embodied a force which did not have even an incorporeal former existence. / Countless such forces are embodied in the mechanical devices that surround us. Such forces are more fantastic than the fairies and genii who served favored mortals in the tales of the Arabian Nights. Yet they are real. They serve by the dozen in every American home, but, to legal sophisticates, the devices which embody them are only 'gadgets.'\" Cites Reckendorfer v. Faber 1975 decision about pencil with eraser tip, and the simple, logical language used in that decision to decide whether or not a combination of two existing elements constitutes a new \"force,\" and ultimately a patentable invention. Admires the simple language, written for a general public, of Justice Hunt's decision, wishes Douglas had consulted it. Hunt: \"The combination to be patentable must produce a different force or effect, or result in the combined forces or process, from that given by the separate parts. There must be a new result produced by their union: if not, it is only an aggregation of old elements.\" Ends up arguing that lead pencil and attached rubber that \"Not only is there no new result, but there is no joint operation.\" ",
"author": "Crouch, Logan R.",
"title": "The Inventor in the Courts: Confusion as a 'Standard' for Invention.",
"source": "American Bar Association Journal. Feb 1954. p. 103",
"notes": "http://bit.ly/bh8w3e Using the parable of the raft of two logs, makes the interesting point that a gadget is only the material instantiation of a fantastic new force produced by… what, ingenuity? This is as a critique of the 1950 opinion of Justice Douglas in the A&P case, saying that even though something seems like just a \"gadget,\" it \"embodied a force which did not have even an incorporeal former existence.\" In general, the article argues that \"lawyers and judges, particularly on the Supreme Court, do not understand the technical problems of patent law or the principles of mechanics underlying it. He suggests that courts should rely more heavily upon the law itself to make up for their lack of knowledge of the specific waters of mechanics about which they know little.\" Crouch argues that Jackson's list of patent un-worthy gadgets doesn't pay attention to the distinction given by Hunt.",
"requires_revision": "multiple quotes"
},
{
"year": 1955,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "retro",
"quote": "One section titled: \"Mechanization of gadgets and guns.\" \"This was a period when inventors multiplied U.S. manpower--and womanpower--many times with devices which mechanized routine tasks. The Gatling gun was a crank-turned cluster of barrels which fired 350 shots per minute. The cherry pitter was a crank-turned kitchen gadget which cleaned a cupful of fruit in about the same time.\" on the sewing machine: \"Any of these household gadgets could have been made in 1500, insofar as their mechanical principles were concerned. But they did not come into being until the American housewife demanded them and convinced her husband she could afford them.\"",
"author": "Smith, Bradley",
"title": "The Romantic Decades",
"source": "LIFE, Oct 17, 1955.",
"notes": "PIC http://bit.ly/9YACU4 Part of a large, full color piece on \"The Romantic Decades\" before the Civil War. Transportation, architecture, interior design, and culture. ",
"requires_revision": "multiple quotes"
},
{
"year": 1956,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "",
"author": "Nelson, Kay Sharp",
"title": "Gadget-Textile Painting",
"source": "",
"notes": "FIND THIS",
"requires_revision": "incomplete"
},
{
"year": 1956,
"decade": 1950,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "definition",
"quote": "Just where the first use in libraries of mechanical trivia was made is no doubt, thoroughly documented in the literature. Quite possibly, the first 'gadget' to gain general acceptance was some device as simple but as effective as the rubber date stamp. Clipped to the end of a pencil, this little gem has has saved thousands of man-hours, and assisted in relegating 'library script' to the category of interesting leftovers in the card catalogs of university libraries. […] the machines and devices which are to be discussed here are those which may be regarded as simple extensions of the hander mind and which are designed to speed some operation or to relieve muscular strain, but not those intended to alter substantially the methods commonly used in libraries. / The common aim in introducing tools or machines into almost any process is to reduce the time or energy required to perform some operation or to produce a more uniformly satisfactory result. To stick to this rule in the application of what may be referred to as 'gadgets' is sometimes difficult; many of these devices have a kind of fascination for some librarians which occasionally obscures the true economics of their application\" (239). \"The popularity of gadgets is attested to by the space allotted to them in such professional journals as the A.L.A. Bulletin [the \"Gadgets, Gismos, and Gimmicks\" column], the Library Journal and PNLA Quarterly in the form of regular columns or departments and of articles proclaiming the success of their various applications. A few examples of the types of items escrowed briefly in the PNLA Quarterly for January 1956 are: visible files, copying machines, paper cutter, copy follower, and routing forms. Often these are already in use in libraries, but the wide range of materials listed shows the extent to which librarians search for things which may speed up their work.\" * * * See the \"review of the gadgets used in one library\" broken down by genre, as well as discussion of how they are arranged at work stations \"so that the work in which they are used may be performed in a consistent and logical flow,\" on p. 242.",
"author": "Blasingame, Ralph Jr.",
"title": "Gadgets: Miscellanea, But Not All Trivia",
"source": "Library Trends. vol. 5. October, 1956. p. 239",
"notes": "From a special issue of the journal on \"Mechanization in Libraries.\" Identifies something in the structure of the gadget that inspire \"fascination,\" distracting from the economics of their use in the first place.",
"requires_revision": "multiple quotes"
},
{
"year": 1968,
"decade": 1960,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "definition;trivial",
"quote": "French, in borrowing the English word 'gadget', lays far more stress than English-speakers generally do on the connotation for which a gadget is an object, such as a novelty item, with no function or use value. It is with this emphasis that the author uses the term here and throughout the present work.\" (7) And as for using the word \"gizmo\": \"I have hused 'gizmo' for the French catch-all term 'machin,' whose close kinship to the French 'machine' is thus not apparent in the English (123)",
"author": "Benedict, James",
"title": "translators note",
"source": " Beaudrillard, Jean, The System of Objects / Le systéme des objets",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "multiple quotes"
},
{
"year": 1969,
"decade": 1960,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "Nance was gradu­ated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in English. He writes: \"After an exposure to the fascination of electronic gadgetry during service in the Air Force I changed fields and studied physics and mathematics at Purdue University. For seven years I was a research engineer with General Motors, finally combining my two loves-words and gadgets-as a technical editor.",
"author": "",
"title": "The Authors",
"source": "cientific American 221, (July 1969). p. 16",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no tags"
},
{
"year": 1975,
"decade": 1970,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "There are two basic kinds of security systems. The first is \" perimeter \" defense, or covering-the exterior of a facility to guard against entry. The second is \" volume, \" or spatial intrusion defense, to detect an intruder once he is inside. The options in these categories are almost endless. Sensor Systems, Inc., of 2 N. Riverside Plaza, which designs and markets security systems for some of Chicago's largest commercial and institutional clients, specializes in sophisticated gadgetry. It recently helped design a nearly foolproof perimeter system for a Chicago area plant handling nuclear materials.",
"author": "",
"title": "",
"source": "Chicago Tribune. 15 May 1975.",
"notes": "",
"requires_revision": "no tag"
},
{
"year": 2011,
"decade": 2010,
"primary": "",
"secondary": "",
"quote": "As a musician and a music critic, I have learned that listening is an active pursuit, a discipline. It involves putting the mindset of gadgetland on hold - you know, \"it's all about me, my playlist!\" -, and being willing to receive input from the outside world",
"author": "Tom Moon",
"title": "This I Believe",
"source": "WHYY",
"notes": "http://bit.ly/mYD7Xr",
"requires_revision": "no tag"
}
]
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