title: Singleton Pattern - Default Property
body: <p>I've been studying the Singleton pattern as it is used in the Settings class. Here's the relevant code from Settings.Designer.cs for my project AccessTest:</p>
  
  <pre><code>internal sealed partial class Settings : global::System.Configuration.ApplicationSettingsBase
  {        
      private static Settings defaultInstance = ((Settings)(global::System.Configuration.ApplicationSettingsBase.Synchronized(new Settings())));
  
      public static Settings Default
      {
          get
          {
              return defaultInstance;
          }
      }
  
      public string applicationSetting1
      {
          get
          {
              return ((string)(this["applicationSetting1"]));
          }
      }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What is unclear to me is why the property 'applicationSetting1' is accessed through another property 'Default' like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>var value = AccessTest.Properties.Settings.Default.applicationSetting1;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm running VS2013 C# and 4.5.</p>