David ‘Panda’ Mery

The first use of the word ‘gizmonaut’ appears to be in ‘programmers are almost universally gizmonauts’ by Lou Grinzo (Source: EXE Magazine, November 1999) and, with a different spelling, in a book titled The Gismonauts written by Keo Felker Lazarus (Published in 1981 by Modern Curriculum Press; ISBN 0695416073)

A ‘gizmo’ is ‘1. something whose name is either forgotten or not known [syn: dohickey, dojigger, doodad, doohickey, gimmick, gizmo, gubbins, thingamabob, thingumabob, thingmabob, thingamajig, thingumajig, thingmajig, thingummy] 2. a device that is very useful for a particular job [syn: appliance, contraption, contrivance, convenience, gadget, gizmo, widget]’ (Source: WordNet)

‘What we do know about the origin of ‘gizmo’ is that it is a relatively new word -- in fact, if you've been using it all your life you can't be over 50 years old. ‘Gizmo’ seems to have originated in the U.S. Navy during or shortly before World War II, where it was used as an all-purpose synonym for ‘whatchamacallit.’ The postwar return of draftees to the civilian world brought the word into general usage, and postwar authors from Saul Bellow to Max Shulman popularized ‘gizmo’ in the late 1940's and early 1950's.’ (Source: The Word Detective)