Tool
A fully engineered, self-contained device or multitool, typically small, compact, utilitarian, and more often than not, inexpensive. Hand-powered and mechanical.
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Year: 1907
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:
Source: Blackwood’s Magazine, vol. 182[?] Dec. 1907. p. 746
Year: 1917
Quote: ““I appreciate the compliment,” began Sir William, “that he implies to my device, but, as a matter of fact, I hardly think the apparatus is sufficiently perfect yet——” / The Lieutenant-Commander laughed rather brutally. “He isn’t paying compliments. He went on to say he didn’t want the assistance of—er—new inventions to bag a Fritz once he’s sighted him.” / 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
Source:
Year: 1920
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
Source: Luck on the Wing: Thirteen Stories of a Sky Spy. 1920. p. 182-3
Year: 1922
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
Source: The Coast Artillery Journal. v57n4. October, 1922
Year: 1923
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:
Source: Popular Science, July 1923, p. 69
Year: 1924
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:
Source: Scientific American 131, (July 1924), p. 37-42
Year: 1929
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:
Source: Scientific American 140, (April 1929). p. 346-348
Year: 1930
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:
Source: Popular Science, April 1930. p. 142
Year: 1930
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:
Source: Popular Mechanics, Dec 1930.
Year: 1930
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:
Source: Boy’s Life, April 1930. p. 54
Year: 1930
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:
Source: Popular Science, Dec 1930. p. 86
Year: 1930
Quote: “it? Shut the door. “ He examined the card. “ Never heard of this chap. Look at this, Goath. Anybody you know? What does he want? “ “ Wanted to speak to you, sir, “ replied Stanley, looking very mysteriousand important, with a hint of the “ shadderer “ in his manner. “ Very important. That’s what he said. “ “ I’ll bet he did, “ said Mr. Dersingham, with a grin at the other two. “ Probably wants to sell me some ridiculous office gadget. If he did, though, he’d probably have something about it on his card. This is a private card. Golspie, Golspie? No, I don’t know him. Look here, Stanley, just tell him I’m having a discussion – no, a thingumty – a conference, just now, but if it’s something really important, not trying to sell me typewriters and files and muck, I’ll see him soon. He can either call again or he can wait”
Author: Priestly, John
Source: The Sundial Press 1944
Year: 1932
Quote: “her again she flung him aside, her strength gathering. Anger and renewed horror made her strong and she warded herself from his fingers. She ran down the hill and out to the corn rows, leaping over the new green shoots and the plucked grain that the crows had despoiled, and she scattered the clods to a small dust that trembled in the air after her foot was gone. She walked through the house the next day on the duties assigned to her, as if she were no part of the place, as if she were an unrelated gadget pitched awkwardly through the utensils and through the prescribed hours. Her father spoke at the table: “ I spent the day in the corn. I replanted fifty hills the crows uprooted? a flock, a thousand strong, you’d think. “ “ I thought Joan made a scarecrow. “ They talked about the image in the upper field. “ No crow went anear the upper field, “ they said. Tony Wright came to the door of the house late in the morning and asked for”
Author: Roberts, Elizabeth Madox
Source: Harpers Magazine (193209) pages: 458-466
Year: 1932
Quote: “puckered from the salt. Nowadays nobody pops corn. Report has it that in New York City there are not more than ten or twelve popcorn stands. Any lover of the delicacy who can, offhand, think of more than two is lucky. Even at Coney Island, where the popcorn trade should be brisk, one can walk the length of the Boardwalk without seeing a stand. Perhaps modern invention has made the pioneer delight of eating popcorn seem an anachronism. At any rate, there is not the old joy in corn popped in a little electrical gadget that there used to be in the delicious stuff that was energetically shaken in a frying pan over a redhot stove. A German techni cian sees a city as Breathing a great organism of a constantly inhaling Metropolis. and exhaling vast breaths up and down in the atmosphere. In Berlin, he estimates, the breathing of human beings and animals and the exhausts of automobiles and chimneys produces at least 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide a day. Trees and other living plants absorb only a small fraction of the gas”
Author: Laughlin, J. Laurence
Source: New York Times: (Editorials): 19320107
Year: 1932
Quote: “Newest sideshow built around ‘mechanical phrenologist,’ intricate gadget that looks like a permanent waver. Plungers feel out cranial high spots and hollows and automatically type a ‘character analysis.’”
Author:
Source: Variety, April 5, 1932
Year: 1933
Quote: “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)”
Author: Galbraith, Robert Earle ed.
Source: New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons. 1933.
Year: 1934
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
Source: Scientific American 150, (February 1934). p.68-70
Year: 1934
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:
Source: Scientific American 151, (October 1934) p. 213
Year: 1934
Quote: “Outstanding fizzes in direct sales have been electric clocks, candy and mechanical preparations. Bust-up of the electric clock attempt was due to the facts, first, that most direct sales customers don’t have electricity, and second, it was a mechanical gadget which took plenty of involved vocabulary to explain. Direct sales men all state that the article must be simple and understandable immediately. “
Author:
Source: Variety, May 29, 1934
Year: 1934
Quote: “A couple of li’l gadgets have been picked up by Walter Futter on his trip here that should net him plenty. The first is a specially constructed microphone wit ha Voice Filter device. It will change any screen actor’s voice to any particular pleasant tone desired with the magic filter. It has been developed and patented by one of the country’s greatest organic chemists who has had lots to do with perfecting sound-on-film. . . . The second gadget picked up by the enterprising Mister Futter is a new type of make-up remover. . . . If Walter’s two gadgets work as per dope transmitted to us we figure Walt should be retiring on his millions a couple years from now.”
Author: Daly, Phil M.
Source: The Film Daily, July 12, 1934
Year: 1935
Quote: “Therefore, I reasoned, no normal person can lie without increasing his blood pressure. This reasoning proved sound. Every time a subject lied, his systolic blood pressure went up. The more important the lie, the greater the mental effort and the greater the rise in blood pressure. I published the systolic blood pressure test for deception in rgy. Immediately the newspapers dubbed it the “ Lie Detector “ and referred to it as a mysterious apparatus. Actually the Lie Detector uses standard types of the sphygmomanometer - that little gadget which doctors wrap around your arm just above the elbow to take your blood pressure - to reveal the added mental effort used in lying.”
Author: Marston, William Moulton
Source: Reader’s Digest: 1935: July: 29-33
Year: 1935
Quote: “No wonder Lilian Bond is smiling! She has found a new can opener that accomplishes its task without the least bit of exertion on her part. [ . . . ] You slip a can of whatever you choose into a round, adjustable brace that holds it firm and stationary, push on a lever and the top of the can comes off slick as anything! This gadget is called “Dazey de Luxe,” formerly known as “Speedo. [. . . ] Any little girl likes cookies, and Shirley—the one and only Shirley—is no exception. That is the reason Mrs. Temple bought that truly remarkable gadget which has been put into use more than once in the Temple kitchen. It has various “form plates” which will cut cookie dough into various shapes. You select a plate, put the dough into the press, turn the crank and there are your cookies, all ready for the oven.”
Author:
Source: Hollywood, August 1935
Year: 1935
Quote: “And at last we have lighted on just the thing for in-between-hairdressing visits. It’s a clever little gadget called Lechler’s Ringlet Quick . . . and a neat remedy for ringlets that insist on dropping down on the neckline. You dampen the hair, hold the knob of the curler, release a spring, and slip in the hair to be curled. Wind tightly, slip a bobby pin into the ringlet, and draw out the curler. There you are . . . as many curls as you want on just one curler . . . and for only 50c.”
Author:
Source: Movie Classic, July 1935
Year: 1935
Quote: “Are you a bachelor girl with a small apartment or room where you “keep house” and do your own lingerie washing? Then you’ll be tickled at this clever, new gadget that is a clothesline with rubber suction things at the end. Apply them on any smooth surface and they will stick, until you want to take them down. Clever, these modern gals! 15c buys the whole business!”
Author:
Source: Movie Classic, September 1935
Year: 1936
Quote: “At night the automobile lights lure out hundreds of hares and rabbits of suicidal bent, which try to end it all beneath the wheels and in many cases do. It is all right to run over His Majesty’s game, but it isn’t all right to pick it up and take it away, for that comes under the head of poaching, and they are quite fastidious about these laws. It has not been many generations since it was legal to set man traps in the fields to catch poachers, and one of these devices, a wrought-iron gadget on the order of a rat trap but much bigger and strong enough to break a man’s leg, is now exhibited in the King’s Lynn Museum.”
Author: Pegler, Westbrook
Source: Random House, p. 144-45
Year: 1936
Quote: “First U. S. patent on a writing-machine, however, was issued in 1829 to a remarkable man named William Austin Burt. On this device, in March 1830, Inventor Burt whacked out the first letter typewritten in the U.S. Last week the Smithsonian Institution proudly announced that it had acquired and would shortly display this message. # Inventor Burt’s machine, made entirely of wood, was destroyed in the Patent Office fire of 1836. It was a ponderous gadget with the type carried on a circular frame operated by a lever. That Burt could write faster with his machine than by hand is highly improbable. Yet it had a feature that was lacking in some commercial machines for many years: separate sets of capital and lower-case letters, with a shift mechanism for changing from one to the other. # Descended from a family of early Massachusetts settlers, William Austin Burt was a surveyor, mechanic and millwright. He lived on a farm near Detroit when he put”
Author:
Source: Time Magazine: 1936/11/23
Year: 1936
Quote: “Onslow Stevens thinks one of the handiest gadgets to have in the house is Holdems . . . for repairing loose chair rungs. “They really do the trick,” says Onslow. “You simply remove the rung in question and force it back into the socket with a Holdems alongside of it. The barbs on either side of the little metal gadget hold the run in place forever.””
Author:
Source: Movie Classic, January 1936
Year: 1937
Quote: “Tired of lacing up his boots, a Chicagoan named W. L, Judson in 1893 devised the world’s first slide fastener. It worked badly, but it made an instantaneous impression upon Colonel Lewis Walker, a lawyer from Meadville, Pa. Colonel Walker spent the next 20 years and about $1,000,000 collected from a multitude of sources, before he began to achieve any commercial success with the gadget. Judson was unable to perfect it and it was not until 1913 that one Gideon Sundback developed the “ zipper “ as everyone now knows it. Started that year in a $300-a-year shack in Meadville, Hookless Fastener Co., maker of “ Talon “ fasteners, immediately went to town, is now the biggest of 16-odd U. S. zipper makers.”
Author:
Source: Time Magazine: 1937/08/23
Year: 1938
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.
Source: Scientific American 158, (February 1938). p. 78-80
Year: 1938
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:
Source: LIFE. Aug 29, 1938
Year: 1939
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
Source: The American Mercury. v47n187. July 1939.
Year: 1939
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.
Source: Sewage Works Journal. v11n1. Jan 1939. p. 132.
Year: 1939
Quote: “Napoleon decorated Joseph Marie Jacquard for his invention of Jacquard cards, those perforated little pieces of paper that control looms in such a way as to make them weave predetermined designs repetitiously. Now produced by automatic machinery, these cards are still expensive. Inasmuch as a separate card is needed for each thread of weft, a mere 10-inch design may require 800 cards which cost a little more than $100.00 to make. Not so with the Lefler robot. The cost has plummeted to $5.00. With this surprisingly simple gadget, the most intricate designs may be faithfully duplicated. Merely writing one’s name on a copper plate is sufficient to initiate an action that eventuates in the appearance of // that name woven into cloth with every shade and inflection perfectly preserved. A delicate electric finger plays over the inked copper master and delivers an electronically-amplified current to a series of small electromagnets each of which controls a needle of the loom.”
Author: Yates, Raymond F.
Source: Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York
Year: 1940
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:
Source: Popular Science. July 1940. p. 109
Year: 1940
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
Source: Country Notes. Harper & Brothers: 1940
Year: 1941
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:
Source: LIFE. June 9, 1941
Year: 1941
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.
Source: Scientific American 164, (April 1941). p. 212-214
Year: 1941
Quote: ““I’m afraid,” put in Cutie himself at this point, “that my firends obey a higher one than you, now.” / “The hell they do! You get out of here. I’ll settle with you later and with these animated gadgets right now.” / Cutie shook his heavy head slowly. “I’m sorry, but you don’t understand. These are robots–and that means they are reasoning beings. They recognize the Master, now that I have preached Truth to them. All the robots do. They call me the prophet.” His head drooped. “I am unworthy–but perhaps–””
Author: Asimov, Isaac
Source: Astounding Science Fiction (April 1941)
Year: 1942
Quote: “[Stratton stressed that with factory conversion the housewife must be “conscious that she may have to keep her present supply of equipment and appliances for the duration or go without.” Stratton further warned women that their carelessness in conservation would only result in a greater burden for themselves. For example, unless a housewife had access to natural ice, she would have “no refrigeration after the mechanical icebox stops mnning. When the toaster goes dead, the electric orange squeezer gives up the ghost - breakfast will take that much longer to prepare. Have no hope it can be any different… unless we make the usefulness of our household goods outlast the length of the war.”]”
Author: Stratton, Gladys E
Source: Connecticut University. College of Agriculture Extension Service. 1942. 23pp. from Michelle Mock, “The modernization of the American home kitchen, 1900-1960”
Year: 1942
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.
Source: Products Finishing. vol. 7. 1942. p. 26
Year: 1943
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
Source: The Nineteenth Century and After. vol. 134, December 1943. p. 254.
Year: 1944
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:
Source: Sewage Works Journal. v16n6 (Nov 1944), p. 1269.
Year: 1945
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.
Source: The Rotarian Oct 1945. p. 16
Year: 1945
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
Source: My American Adventure. Washburn. 1945.
Year: 1947
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:
Source: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Nov 1947.
Year: 1947
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:
Source: Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. Nov 1947. p. 49.
Year: 1948
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
Source: The House For You To Build, Buy, or Rent. Wiley: 1948
Year: 1948
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.
Source: Popular Science. March 1948. p. 147
Year: 1948
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
Source: The Billboard. October 2, 1948
Year: 1948
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:
Source: The Billboard. January 31, 1948. p. 8
Year: 1948
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
Source: The Rotarian. Mar 1948
Year: 1949
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:
Source: Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. Feb 1949.
Year: 1949
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:
Source: Consumers’ Research Bulletin. Vol. 23-26. 1949. p. 18.
Year: 1950
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 though 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:
Source: Boys’ Life. May 1950.
Year: 1950
Quote: “The typical real-estate subdivision brochure contains distorted maps, claims that distant places are within easy commuting range, and pictures kitchens replete with shining gadgets, living rooms which look like Hitler’s Chancellery, and gardens reminiscent of Marie Antoinette and the Tuileries. These folders, which aim to create a romantic atmosphere, are labeled Rocky Mountain View, American Venice, Marmaduke Manor, Phoenix Park, Pacific Shores, Aztec Village, Wampum City, Quahog Beach, Casabianca, or Capri. Their streets are named after fruits, Presidents, ballplayers, movie stars, Indians, Eskimos, departed local celebrities, Scotch clans, and Riviera resorts. There are usually guarded references to a magnificent community clubhouse where good old Crestfallen Manor still stands, and to murmuring hemlocks, vast expanses of sandy beach on salt or fresh water, and so forth.”
Author: Moses, Robert
Source: The Atlantic, December 1950
Year: 1950
Quote: “New gadget–a transparent envelope made in various sizes for shop orders, blueprints, maps, and record sheets.”
Author: Pilgrim
Source: Negro Star (Wichita, Kansas) • 01-13-1950 • Page [2]
Year: 1950
Quote: “Another interesting game in New York is the game of the man’s hat. The initial price of a man’s hat is nothing to the New Yorker. It’s the upkeep. Most places I’ve visited you hang onto yoru own hat wherever you go. In restaurants you hang them on hooks and watch to see that no one steals them. In theaters you hold your hat on your lap. Some places even have little who gadgets under the seats which hold the hat securely.”
Author: Calloway, Cab
Source: The Plain Dealer (Kansas City, Kansas) • 01-13-1950 • Page [5]
Year: 1951
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
Source: The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. New York: The Vanguard Press, Inc p. 32
Year: 1951
Quote: “With the risks attendant on all such statements, I would like to put forward the alternative view that operations research 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:
Source: Scientific American 185, (December 1951). p. 2-6
Year: 1951
Quote: “Another new gadget that the children all over are raving about is the new individual pencil sharpener. A new school term increases the need for sharply pointed pencils and this little sharpener is just what children need to keep their many pencils in working order and to keep the pencil shavings off the floor. This unique opener has openings for two different size pencils and comes with 2 spare blades.”
Author: Wesley, Ivie
Source: Arkansas State Press (Little Rock, Arkansas) • 09-28-1951 • Page 2
Year: 1951
Quote: “Only a few hours after his body had been deposited in the earth–his son had brought a new born baby into the world with the skill, care, and experience of the years–he was following in his father’s footsteps–I’m sure that the ‘Old Man’ would have been very happy to see him so engaged. With some malady which took away his voice so that it was necessary for him to use some mechanical instrument to talk–I can see him now with the gadget in his hand as his hcin pointed upward–and methinks I hear him say ‘Keep going, my boy!’”
Author: Flowers, Harold
Source: Arkansas State Press (Little Rock, Arkansas) • 10-12-1951 • Page 6
Year: 1953
Quote: “Galton’s curiosity led him to study the peculiarities of identical twins, the sterility of heiresses, the proportion 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.
Source: Scientific American 188, (May 1953), p. 96-102
Year: 1953
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:
Source: Popular Science. May 1953. p. 86
Year: 1953
Quote: “Down to earth values from Gadget Heaven; gifts & gadgets for home & garden. Fall 1953 A104487 “
Author:
Source: Catalog of Copyright Entires. Third Series: 1953: July-December. Library of Congress Copyright Office.
Year: 1953
Quote: “Just a little thought will convince anybody who wants to be fair, that industry actually hasn’t simply grown fat without sharing its wealth. The fiscal reports show profit, but what they don’t show is the amount of money that has gone into vast research to improve goods and materials, to give better service to the consumer. As a result of research and constant testing and improvement, for instance, automobiles are safer than ever before, buildings are constructed with as near fireproof as it is possible to make them, and household gadgets in profusion take the drudgery out of the home.”
Author: Adams, Olive A.
Source: Arkansas State Press (Little Rock, Arkansas) • 06-05-1953 • Page 4
Year: 1953
Quote: “If you’ve had a flat tire recently, you’ll love the new “save-a-tire” gadget. It’s a rubber tube which attaches to the flat tire and a second tire, thus transferring air from one tire to another. In case of a slow leak, this useful gadget eliminates the necessity of changing a tire.”
Author: Lane, Carol
Source: The Plain Dealer (Kansas City, Kansas) • 10-16-1953 • Page [2]
Year: 1954
Quote: “New acquaintances: Mattie McDonald, who weekended with Lillian (Butler) Allen, is a beauty operator who hails from St. Louis where she wields hair gadgets at La Belle Beauty Salon.”
Author: Howard, Lucille Troy
Source: The Plain Dealer (Kansas City, Kansas) • 10-08-1954 • Page [8]
Year: 1955
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
Source: LIFE, Oct 17, 1955.
Year: 1955
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:
Source: Jet. July 28, 1955
Year: 1955
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:
Source: Scientific American 193, (September 1955). p. 32-46
Year: 1955
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:
Source: Popular Science. Mar 1955. p. 170
Year: 1955
Quote: “For the man of just ordinary skill who does not want a fancy power workshop–here’s a mighty useful gadget.”
Author:
Source: Changing Times: The Kiplinger Magazine. Sept 1955. p. 44
Year: 1955
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.
Source: Scientific American 192, (February 1955). p. 67-77
Year: 1955
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.
Source: Scientific American 193, (December 1955). p. 112-123
Year: 1955
Quote: “So, we introduced him to one of the little accessory items that can add so much pleasure to your photographic efforts–the [illegible] viewer. Now he carries this handy little gadget, with a box of his newest slides. So when his friends start comparing the snapshots they carry in their wallets…”
Author:
Source: The Plain Dealer (Kansas City, Kansas) • 11-25-1955 • Page 6
Year: 1956
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.
Source: Library Trends. vol. 5. October, 1956. p. 239
Year: 1956
Quote: “New Things for the House: Just Look at all the Novel Appliances, Fixtures, and Gadgets You Can Buy to Modernize the Old Place”
Author:
Source:
Year: 1956
Quote: “I’ve always maintained that one of the most useful gadgets you can have around the house is a husband. Husbands can oil locks, change light bulbs and repair all sorts of things that go out of whack. The only trouble is they’re so smug about their “superior” technical knowledge. They have a habit of smoothly explaining the working of any machine or device in high sounding technical terms. “
Author:
Source: Plain Dealer (Kansas City, Kansas) • 03-23-1956 • Page 3
Year: 1956
Quote: “Discourage prowlers with a lighted window in your absence from home overnight. There’s a tricky little gadget – a night lighter – that keeps one of your windows aglow while you’re away. It works like magic. All you do is place th esmall, box-like mechanism on a table in front of the window, and plug it into the lamp you want lighted at night. An electronic eye points directly toward the window, and when it gets dark, the electronic eye automatically turns the lightbulb on, and keeps the lamp burning ‘til dawn.”
Author: Reynolds, Jan
Source: Crusader (Rockford, Illinois) • 04-13-1956 • Page 8
Year: 1957
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:
Source: The New Scientist. Feb 7, 1957
Year: 1957
Quote: “Perhaps the most versatile of all presents for your home cache are those for the home. You’ll see clever gadgets wherever you go. Those of stainless steel are your best bet. Not only do they promise long and satisfying service for the receiver, but being non-tarnishable, you can be sure that they’ll emerge with the same brand-new lustre no matter how long they’ve been wrapped up in the closet. Aside from gadgets, other thoughtful gift items available in stainless steel include salt and pepper shakers, ashtrays, small holloware and serving pieces.”
Author: Wright, Gloria
Source: Plain Dealer (Kansas City, Kansas) • 12-27-1957 • Page 4
Year: 1958
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
Source: Billboard. Aprill 21, 1958
Year: 1958
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:
Source: Billboard. June 23, 1958.
Year: 1958
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:
Source: Billboard. June 23, 1958. p. 86
Year: 1958
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
Source:
Year: 1959
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.
Source: Psychoanalytic Quarterly. 28: 330-341. 1959
Year: 1959
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
Source: LIFE. Dec 28, 1959. p. 153
Year: 1959
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
Source: Baseball Digest. June 1959. p. 23
Year: 1960
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
Source: Scientific American 203, (September 1960). p.173-192
Year: 1960
Quote: “” This is the secret of the power holster, “ Brucco said, tapping the flexible cable. “ It is perfectly loose while you are using the weapon. But when you want it returned to the holster – “ Brucco made an adjustment and the cable became a stiff rod that whipped the gun from Jason’s hand and suspended it in midair. “ Then the return. “ The rod-cable whirred and snapped the gun back into the holster. “ The drawing action is the opposite of this, of course. “ “ A great gadget, “ Jason said, “ but how do I draw? Do I whistle or something for the gun to pop out? “ “ No, it is not sonic control, “ Brucco answered with a sober face. “ It is much more precise than that. Here, take your left hand and grasp an imaginary gun butt. Tense your trigger finger. Do you notice the pattern of the tendons in the wrist? Sensitive actuators touch the tendons in your right wrist.”
Author: Harrison, Harry
Source: [Short story] In: New York City
Year: 1960
Quote: “There is nothing so dangerous to a whole nation than a tribe of idle women busying themselves with projects’ of one sort or another. I’d like to hang the men who invented automatic washing machines and other gadgets! Now the majority of people don’t have homes; they have housing’ for electrical equipment which gives them more time – more time for what? Mischief. No wonder we have the problem of juvenile delinquency.”
Author: Davenport, Marcia
Source:
Year: 1960
Quote: “At the Acoustical Society of America meeting in Cleveland last October we witnessed the first public demonstration of what noise-abatement officers need most – a lightweight portable meter, designed by Floyd C. Anderson of Boeing Airplane Company, which measures noise simply and directly intones. “ With one of those gadgets, “ says Trooper Malesky longingly, “ I could really quiet this pike, “ Despite lack of a meter, the Connecticut truck-stopping program has proved reasonably effective.”
Author: Brecher, Edward
Source: Saturday Evening Post: 2/6/1960, Vol. 232 Issue 32, p32-74
Year: 1961
Quote: “How in the world did one attach a pegboard to a stone wall? How did one attach anything to a stone wall, for that matter? After the pegboard there would be the paneling. He sat down on an old box and focused on the problem. Perhaps one bored holes in the stone with some kind of an electric gadget. But then, when you stuck things into the holes, why didn’t they come right out again? It all seemed rather hopeless.”
Author: Streeter, Edward
Source:
Year: 1961
Quote: “Make up a package of all the things a new home can’t do without. What? A ball of twine, Scotch tape, a pair of kitchen shears, a box of elastic bands, a package of small pads for marketing lists, a box of sharpened pencils, a tiny tool kit, some pushpins, a new telephone-address book for both husband and wife, a box of kitchen matches, an extension cord, a gadget to unscrew jar lids, and anything else you’ve found you can’t get along without.”
Author: Valentine, Helen
Source: Good Housekeeping: 1961: September: 18-19
Year: 1961
Quote: “I looked in vain for modern instruments. “ Got none, “ said Campbell. “ Don’t hold with all these gadgets. “ Skipper Smith explained that they went out on bearings. When certain hills and headlands bore in certain directions, and the weather was right and the state of the moon and tide, |p517 and all that sort of natural thing, why they knew they’d as good a chance of getting on fish there as anywhere else, and shot their nets in a businesslike and orderly manner. That was that.”
Author: Villiers, Alan
Source: National Geographic: 1961: April: 493-541
Year: 1962
Quote: “The average modern man uses his muscles as little as possible, and today’s labor-saving gadgets really pamper him. The resulting muscle weakness shows in three places. First, many men and most women are weak in hands, arms, shoulders, and upper trunk muscles. Consequently, their chins protrude and their shoulders sag.”
Author: Ann E. Jewett, Clyde Knapp
Source: Washington DC: American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation
Year: 1964
Quote: “TWO-SHOT BOND Allow a man to stop off for a quick one on route. “ Q “ (exasperated) It has not been perfected after years of patient research and time for that purpose, double-o-seven. “ Q “ gets out of the car and shuts the door. Bond glances at the gadgets in his hand then leans an arm on the roof of the car. “ Q “ And incidentally, we’d appreciate its return, along with all your other equipment – intact, for once, when you return from the field. BOND Well, you’d be surprised the amount of wear-and-tear that goes on out there in the field. Anything else? “ Q “ walks forward. DOLLY IN on Bond, looking bored. “”
Author: Maibaum, Richard
Source: [movie script]
Year: 1966
Quote: “When they try to fill the swimming pool, the water thrashes and pitches so hysterically that I peek over the edge expecting to see a captured mermaid. In the bar, the bottles tinkle like some immensely dainty Swiss gadget, and the Daiquiris come to you aquiver, little circlets of agitation spinning back and forth between the center and the rim.”
Author: Updike, John
Source:
Year: 1967
Quote: “Sometimes. however, he is under the influence of alcohol when he commits his offenses. He is exaggeratedly preoccupied with cleanliness and order. He belongs to no organized social groups and has no intimate friends. Competitive sports and games don’t apical to him. He likes mechanical gadgets. movies and art, though he is not artistically gifted. His emotional impairments differ in degree rather than kind from those of law-abiding neurotics and even many “ normal “ people.”
Author: Kobler, John
Source: Saturday Evening Post: 1/28/1967, Vol. 240 Issue 2
Year: 1968
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
Source: Scientific American 221, (December 1969). p. 136-146
Year: 1969
Quote: “Bacon decurler, handy gadget, 88c”
Author:
Source: Bulletin (Chicago, Illinois) • 07-09-1969 • Page Page [10]
Year: 1970
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
Source: New York: Random House. 1970
Year: 1970
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: to 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 slips away to her vaginal laboratory.”
Author: Richardson, Jack
Source: Harpers. August 1970. pp. 82-89.
Year: 1970
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
Source: Harpers. April 1970.
Year: 1970
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:
Source: Time. 27 February 1970.
Year: 1970
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
Source: Scientific American 223, (December 1970). p. 122-135
Year: 1972
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
Source: Harpers. December 1972
Year: 1972
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
Source: Garden City, New York: Nelson Doubleday, Inc. 1972.
Year: 1972
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
Source: Saturday Evening Post. Summer 1972.
Year: 1972
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:
Source: Time Magazine. 27 March 2011.
Year: 1976
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
Source:
Year: 1981
Quote: “As he scrubbed the stinking dog he remembered inexplicably their Gift of the Magi Christmas. They had vowed to give each other something nonmaterial. He was a senior at Harvard Law then and they were tight for cash, barely able to survive on her job demonstrating kitchen gadgets at Macy’s.”
Author: Adler, Warren
Source: Warner Books
Year: 1984
Quote: “From the pocket of his bulky parka (he had bought it convinced that from the Rockies east, America was a frigid wasteland after October 1st or so – now he was sweating rivers), Morgan Sloat took a small steel box. Below the latch were ten small buttons and an oblong of cloudy yellow glass a quarter of an inch high and two inches long. He pushed several of the buttons carefully with the fingernailof his left-hand pinky, and a series of numbers appeared briefly in the readout window. Sloat had bought this gadget, billed as the world’s smallest safe, in Zurich. According to the man who had sold it to him, not even a week in a crematory oven would breach its carbon-steel integrity. Now it clicked open. Sloat folded back two tiny wings of ebony jeweler’s velvet, revealing something he had had for well over twenty years – since long before the odious little brat who was causing all this trouble had been born. It was a tarnished tin key”
Author: King, Stephen
Source:
Year: 1985
Quote: “” What is this? “ said Mr. Nadel, holding up a small gadget. “ A flashlight, “ said Jeff. “ I need some cooperation, “ said Mr. Nadel. “ This is fun, “ said Jeff. “ What is this? “ said Mr. Nadel. “ A toenail clipper, “ said Jeff. He packed his visor with the radio on it and decided he would carry onto the bus his stuffed, oversize baseball, his tennis racket and his big radio.”
Author: Winerip, Michael
Source: New York Times: 19850827: Section B; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1
Year: 1986
Quote: “It’s part of a $1.5 million contract awarded last April by NASAs Johnson Space Center, in Houston, for the preliminary design of the huge orbiting space station, scheduled for launch around 1993. The kitchen will have to store a 90-day supply of food for six or seven crew members. It will contain a full complement of amenities? now mostly lacking on the shuttle? including a refrigerator, oven, freezer, dishwasher, trash compactor, food and trash storage, and an inventory-control system. The appliances will be adapted from earthbound kitchen gadgets to operate satisfactorily in a microgravity environment. The idea is to make meals resemble those on Earth as much as possible.”
Author: Fisher, Arthur
Source: Popular Science: 1986: February: 13, 16
Year: 1988
Quote: “We are still not fully unpacked from the move. Boxes of dishes, assorted kitchen gadgets, and books are stored in the attic. Eventually they will make their way to a thrift-store hopper, or be given away for a rummage sale.”
Author: Sibler, Terry
Source: Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston
Year: 1988
Quote: “Most 3-D TV systems rely on simple binocular vision to create depth: When your eyes and brain see objects from slightly different perspectives, a sense of depth, called stereopsis, results. The first gadget to exploit stereopsis, the mirror stereoscope, was invented in 1833 by Sir Charles Wheatstone. He created pairs of drawings, each slightly different from the other to simulate left- and right-eye views, to form a 3-D image when viewed through mirrors.”
Author: Free, John
Source: Popular Science: 1988: June: 58-63, 110
Year: 1989
Quote: “Jesse set off happily every morning for his computer job, and returned every evening with some newp248baby-care gadget – a pack of bunny-shaped diaper pins or an ingenious spouted training cup. He was reading up on childbirth and kept embracing different theories, each more peculiar than the last. (For instance, at one point he proposed that the delivery take place underwater, but he couldn’t find a doctor who would agree to it.)”
Author: Tan, Amy
Source:
Year: 1990
Quote: “Once the net is up, you’ll need the Tee Wizz (about $80), an automatic ball loader. The gadget holds about 50 balls, and when you tap the control switch with your club, a metal arm comes down and places a ball on the tee for you. Now that’s service.”
Author: Bartlett, James Y.
Source: Forbes: 10/1/90 FYI: Vol. 146, p44-48, 4p, 10c