Something that's been bugging me, is when did "smart" become an adjective for machines in the first place, and what were the circumstances around this new use of the word? Before "smart phones" and "smart houses" or "smart watches", what devices were termed 'smart'?

As far as I can figure, it started with "smart bomb" in the early 70s. A term which at this point is so normalized we might not think twice about it, but which I suspect of being propaganda. Here is a 1972 NYTs article suggesting that the term is Pentagon propaganda: https://www.nytimes.com/1972/06/26/archives/smart-bombs-and-...

> "To one who has bombed and been bombed, recent Pentagon propaganda about our new “smart” bombs is dumb and repetitious (not to say, indecent)."