Gadgets & Gizmos

No I am not necessarily thinking about the computer game "Gizmos & Gadgets" that was originally written for DOS computers and sparked enough enthusiasm that it followed along with the computer revolution to 1998 (but I don't want to slight it.) Of course now there are so many newer games with sophisticated software routines, graphics and sound that this game is considered obsolete by the 'now generation'. The game is obsolete under the name "Gizmos & Gadgets" but I feel pretty sure that our interest in Gizmos and Gadgets will only expand as technology and stuff expands. There are more gizmos and gadgets of different types and description  than you can "shake a stick at" and growing in number every day.

I remember when I was a young kid (& thats a long time ago) I first heard the word Gizmo when a plumber friend asked me to get the gizmo out of his tool box so he could thread a pipe. Of course I had no idea of what I was looking for so I said "Mr. Julian, whats a gizmo", with his answer being "son its the thing you use to thread a pipe", I said 'oh' and continued looking. Later Mr. Julian asked me to bring him the pipe cutting gizmo. Now that really threw me since I thought that a threader was called a gizmo and now he was calling the cutter a gizmo. I was on a sharp learning curve when I discovered that there were many different types of gizmos. Some had to do with plumbing, some with electrician wiring, some with auto mechanics and so on. I was feeling pretty smart until another friend threw a left handed monkey wrench into this and called the same thing a gadget. I thought, how could the same thing be both a gizmo and a gadget? I was confused until I learned that a gizmo could be the name of a doodad for a particular job or something you couldn't remember the precise name or the name was not known. Now that simplified things and made a lot of sense to me. So what is a gadget? Much later in life (after Wikipedia - http://tinyurl.com/pwfnx) I found that gadgets are invariably considered to be more unusually or cleverly designed than normal technological objects at the time of their invention & are sometimes referred to as gizmos. If Mr. Julian had given me that definition at my young age I would probably have looked at him and thought "How can anyone be that smart to know that."

The bottom line is, if you don't know what to call something you can always revert to calling it a gadget or gizmo. I am quite certain that some of you will be able to help in knowing when its more politically correct to call something a gizmo vs. gadget.  If you find yourself confused, don't give up hope, just enjoy them. What you call them isn't that important. Its just important that you have plenty of them.