Greates gadget ever

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Im watching the history of gadets on the history channel of course. Like most of their shows its interesting and fun.

So heres the story.

The Top 100 Gadgets of All Time

pola_landcamera.jpgWhether they're strapped to our belts, sitting on our desks, or jammed in an overstuffed closet, we absolutely love our gadgets.

So it wasn't exactly easy coming up with the definitive list of the 100 best gadgets ever unleashed. In the weeks we spent debating the entries, tempers were flared, fingers were pointed, chairs were smashed over heads, and feelings were hurt. But we emerged, like Moses from the mountain, with the world's most authoritative ranking of the best gadgets of all time.

[UPDATE 6/9/2005: Don't miss our follow-on feature, the Top 100 Forgotten Gadgets, featuring the best of more than 1,000 reader suggestions we received after publishing this article.]

But let's lay some ground rules before we get started. What defines a "gadget" anyway?

- It has to have electronic and/or moving parts of some kind. Scissors count, but the knife does not.
- It has to be a self-contained apparatus that can be used on its own, not a subset of another device. The flashlight counts; the light bulb does not. The notebook counts, but the hard drive doesn't.
- It has to be smaller than the proverbial bread box. This is the most flexible of the categories, since gadgets have gotten inexorably smaller over time. But in general we included only items that were potentially mobile: The Dustbuster counts; the vacuum cleaner doesn't.

In the end, we tried to get to the heart of what really makes a gadget a gadget.

So what do you think the greatest gadgets ever were. Id like to seperate electronic gadgets from others though. So give me both.

Hers the full article with its list of the top 100.

LINK

[English assassin]

I'd say the swiss army knife was the greatest non-electrical gadget, even though personally I think they are silly. If ever you want to gut a fish while removing a stone from a horses hoof though, they would be invaluable.

As for electrical gadget, I'd say a hand held GPS.

IMHO to be a true gadget something has to be useful, but equally something you could (and did) perfectly well manage without.

[Beirut]

Best electric gadget: The Flashlight.

Best non-electric gadget: Alcohol.

[Craterus]

These are my favourites from the list:

60. ABACUS, 190 A.D.
Nearly 1,800 years before the first electronic calculators, the Abacus let its user multiply, divide, add, subtract, and calculate square and cube roots ... in both decimal and hexadecimal.

Anything that is this old but still in 100 greatest gadgets has gotta be good.

57. MATTEL MAGIC 8-BALL, 1946
Is this really one of the most important gadgets ever? Signs point to yes.

It's a classic.

50. ETCH-A-SKETCH, 1960
Though devoid of circuitry, we think it's safe to say that this was the world's first handheld with a fully graphical user interface.

Well, it's just a fun gadget.

25. NINTENDO GAME BOY, 1989
Bundling inventor Gunpei Yokoi's Game Boy with the highly addictive Tetris ensured Game Boy's success in the early '90s. Selling over 32 million consoles in its first three years, the Game Boy has had a slew of offspring, but none will ever compare to the original.

Never got boring. Very useful in traffic jams.

23. TELEPHONE, 1876
Though electronic communication existed before the telephone (for example, the telegraph), it was transmitting voice by electricity that changed the world. From this sprang radio, and later television and the internet. But no other device is as much a necessity as the humble phone: No snooty artist will ever look down his nose at you in disdain and proclaim, "Oh, I don't own a phone." Without the phone, there would be no crank calls, phone sex, telemarketing aggravation at dinnertime, or drunken, embarrassing calls to your ex at 3 a.m. However, nor would there be emergency calls to 911, friendly chats, or those vital calls to Santa that keep children in line.

Communciation is pretty important. Plus, this gadget has made hilarious prank calls possible.

20. SWISS ARMY KNIFE, 1891
Karl Elsener's first knife, which was distributed to Swiss enlisted men, featured a blade, a screwdriver, a can opener, and a punch. Today, the company Elsener founded, Victorinox, and its competitor, Wenger, offer dozens of knives featuring up to 33 different tools. Meanwhile, the name has passed into cliche as an apt description of the knife's versatility.

Already been mentioned, but these are always cool. I'd say it an ultimate gadget because you can always find a bigger one which has more built-in gadgets.

[Craterus]

Just found an interesting site about the man with all the best gadgets: James Bond
"Would his most famous gadgets actually work in reality?"
It answers the question.


And this site lists all his gadgets: Clickity Click