"Focal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... identify the very spot on which the telescope stood which was used in this memorable research. It was erected at the house then occupied by Molyneux, on the western extremity of Kew Green. The focal length was 24 feet 3 inches, and the eye-glass was 3 and a half feet above the ground floor. The instrument was first set up on November 26th, 1725. If there had be any appreciable disturbance in the place of Beta Draconis in consequence of the movement of the earth around the sun, the star must ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... the picture, and more especially to give life to the shadows, several figures are introduced. It will be noticed that the cart is inserted at the focal point of the drawing to better assist ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... CAMERA, is superior to every other form of Camera, for the Photographic Tourist, from its capability of Elongation or Contraction to any Focal Adjustment, its extreme Portability, and its adaptation for taking either Views ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... many observations on this portion of the heavens, using a Newtonian reflector of twenty feet focal length, and an aperture of eighteen inches. With this powerful telescope he completely resolved the whitish appearance into stars, which the telescopes he had formerly used had not light enough to do. In the most vacant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... ground I have for believing it to be true is that on that mountain-side near Lhasa I had a specially favourable opportunity of looking at the world from, as it were, a proper focal distance. And it is only from a proper focal distance that we can see what things really are. If we put ourselves right up against a picture in the National Gallery we cannot possibly see its beauty—see what the picture really is. No man is a hero to his own ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... DOUBLE-BODIED FOLDING CAMERA, is superior to every other form of Camera, for the Photographic Tourist, from its capability of Elongation or Contraction to any Focal Adjustment, its Portability, and its adaptation for taking either Views or Portraits.—The ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... may conclude that if an individual deviates at all from the path which the laws (or, directrix) indicate, if he does not show true respect to the decrees of the focal government, and preserve the true position between them, directly he is found deviating from his course, he is quickly banished to a less enlightened sphere. In an ellipse there is less likelihood ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... according to the prescript of pure reason, would, in fact, be a church. There would he focal points in it, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... these themes; and that analogy here will often amount to conclusive demonstration. It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to add, that all the suggestions attributed to Brewster and Herschel, in the beginning of the article, about "a transfusion of artificial light through the focal object of vision," etc., etc., belong to that species of figurative writing which comes, most properly, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... which query we may venture to answer in the negative. For in the present case the rule for determining the distance of the distinct base, or respective focus from the glass, is this: as the difference between the distance of the object and focus is to the focus or focal length, so the distance of the object from the glass is to the distance of the respective focus or distinct base from the glass. [Molyneux Dioptr., Par. I. Prop. 5.] Let us now suppose the object to be ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... of basket-laden women, he will find that their goal is that focal-point of every old-time city, the market-place. There arrived, he will witness a scene common enough in Europe but hardly to be duplicated anywhere in America. Hundreds of venders of meat, fish, vegetables, cloths, and household utensils have their open-air booths scattered ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... the pump itself. All the measurements were made by a fine cathetometer which was constructed for me by William Grunow; see this Journal, Jan., 1874, p. 23. It was provided with a well-corrected object-glass having a focal length of 200 mm. and as used by me gave a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... consciousness like so many pieces of wood following each other at random down a rushing current, now this one ahead, now that. On the contrary, our thoughts come, one after the other, as they are beckoned or caused. The thought now in the focal point of your consciousness appeared because it sprouted out of the one just preceding it; and the present thought, before it departs, will determine its successor and lead it upon the scene. This is to say that our thought ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... nerve in Michael Phelan's being was concentrated in his eyes at that moment and it is highly doubtful if he would have heard a fife and drum corps in full blare enter the kitchen. He heard nothing and saw nothing below that upward focal angle. ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... three or four tiny ants rushed at each of the larger ones and began as thorough a cleaning as masseurs or Turkish-bath attendants. The three arrivals were at once hustled away to a distant part of the board and there cleaned from end to end. I found that the focal length of my 8-diameter lens was just out of reach of the ants, so I focused carefully on one of the soldiers and watched the entire process. The small ants scrubbed and scraped him with their jaws, licking him and removing every particle of ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... the pictures taken are to be viewed by an instrument that requires their distance from the eyes to be less than the focal length of the lens used in their formation, what is the result? Why, that they subtend an angle larger than in nature, and are consequently apparently increased in bulk; and the obvious remedy is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... doubt that it was a genuine reproduction of a real list of signatures; and when half a dozen such copies, all just alike, were shown, the conviction became a certainty that all had a common origin. This copy was made with a Harrison's globe lens of sixteen inches' focal length, and was a very sharp and accurate duplicate of the original. It is claimed for this new American invention that it is "quite ahead of anything European"; and the certificates from the United States Coast-Survey Office go far towards ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... language is instinctive in such matters, yet Buddhists or Humians can perfectly well describe the facts in the phenomenal terms which are their favorites. For them the soul is only a succession of fields of consciousness: yet there is found in each field a part, or sub-field, which figures as focal and contains the excitement, and from which, as from a centre, the aim seems to be taken. Talking of this part, we involuntarily apply words of perspective to distinguish it from the rest, words like "here," "this," "now," "mine," or "me"; and we ascribe to the other parts the ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... of loops and whorls are enclosed the focal points which are used to classify them. These points are ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... it has been seen that the glass placed at the observer's eye produces the magnifying power, and the object-glass which bears this power the best is the one that has the largest diameter and the greatest focal distance. In order to magnify 48,000 times it must be much larger than those of Herschel and Lord Rosse. There lay the difficulty, for the casting of these mirrors is ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... to discuss these matters without going into a complete optical discussion. The radii of curvature of the surfaces, beginning with the first, i.e. the external face of the convex lens, are in the ratio of 1, 2, and 3; an allowance of 15 inches focal length per inch of aperture is reasonable (see Optics in Ency. Brit.), and the focal length is the same as the greatest radius of curvature. Thus, for an object glass 2 inches in diameter, the first surface of the convex lens would have a radius of curvature ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... symmetry. center of gravity, center of pressure, center of percussion, center of oscillation, center of buoyancy &c.; metacenter[obs3]. V. be central &c. adj.; converge &c. 290. render central, centralize, concentrate; bring to a focus. Adj. central, centrical[obs3]; middle &c. 68; azygous, axial, focal, umbilical, concentric; middlemost; rachidian[obs3]; spinal, vertebral. Adv. middle; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... give clearer comprehension or lead to greater appreciation of diction, is thorough although it does not possess all the facts. It is thorough because what is significant and dynamic in Hamlet is made focal. The postgraduate student assiduously searching for data for his doctorate thesis is often guided by the erroneous conception of thoroughness; he wants facts that have never seen the light. The more he gets of these, the nearer he approaches his goal. He avoids conclusions; he ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... has seen many cases of delinquents with more or less marked psychopathic signs in which pathological lying was the focal point. He reports five cases at great length, in all of whom the inclination to fabricate stories, "der Hang zum fabulieren,'' is irresistible and apparently not to be repressed by efforts of the will. Risch's main points, built up from study of his cases, are worthy ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... introduce corruption. Should such a person conceive it to be his duty to tell you all your faults, woe betide you! for desirable as self-knowledge is, it is no kindness to have our faults aggravated a hundred-fold, and concentrated before our minds like the converging rays of the sun, in one focal blaze, nor poured upon our heads like the sweeping torrent, nor eked out like the incessant patterings of a drizzling rain. Thus did not Paul. When he felt it his duty to reprove, he was careful to commend what was praiseworthy, and to throw in some expressions of kindness ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... lacks joy, your letter says. Yes; love requires the focal space Of recollection or of hope, E'er it can measure its own scope. Too soon, too soon comes Death to show We love more deeply than we know! The rain, that fell upon the height Too gently to be call'd ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... was the night. They were alone in the darkness, a universe in themselves. The horse's body filled the upper part of the picture; the legs, the great hoofs, frozen to stillness in the midst of their trampling, limited it on either side. And beneath lay the man, his foreshortened face at the focal point in the centre, his arms outstretched towards the sides of the picture. Under the arch of the horse's belly, between his legs, the eye looked through into an intense darkness; below, the space was closed in by the figure of the prostrate man. A central gulf of darkness ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... rather than aid his less fastidious sovereign in overturning the spiritual supremacy of the bishops of Rome. We may honour the conscientious scruples of such men; but, enabled, as we now are, to view their errors at a proper focal distance, we are warranted, by their example, in drawing the inference that the highest human authorities are no tests of truth, and that great energies of intellect often serve but to strengthen prejudices, and give mischievous force ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... lowland; gently undulating central plateau contains water catchment area and nature preserve Natural resources: fish, deepwater ports Land use: arable land 4%; permanent crops 7%; meadows and pastures 0%; forest and woodland 5%; other 84% Environment: mostly urban and industrialized Note: focal point ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... 5/8-inch carbon in the hole through the bottom bracket having top end in focal point of reflector and tighten with set-screw; as this carbon would burn away the light would be raised and it would therefore be necessary to raise the carbon about every hour, as the carbon would burn away about one-half inch ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... writing-table, with blotter, pens, and ink, made a focal-point for her gaze. At first a mere detail in her line of vision, it attained by degrees, it seemed, a definite relevancy to her train of thought. She looked in her portmanteau for her desk, and getting out some note-paper, went to the table and ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... activities and relations to self and others. There are in the life records of our patients certain ever-returning tendencies and situations which a psychiatry of exclusive brain speculation, auto-intoxications, focal infections, and internal secretions could never ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... world for such a man. This battle, universal in our sad epoch of "all old things passing away" against "all things becoming new," has its summary and animating heart in that of Radicalism against Church; there, as in its flaming core, and point of focal splendor, does the heroic worth that lies in each side of the quarrel most clearly disclose itself; and Sterling was the man, above many, to recognize such worth on both sides. Natural enough, in such a one, that the light of Radicalism ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... hate and the sense of evil. You will awake to the perception of God as All-in-all. You will find yourself losing the knowledge and the operation of sin, proportionably as you realize the divine infinitude and believe that He can see nothing outside of His own focal distance. ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... due, as is universally thought, to chemical combustion, but to vital replenishment. No energy is created within the body; it is merely transmitted. The body, in fact, acts as a means of transmission—as a sort of "organic burning glass" which transmits and focuses the sun's rays on one focal point. And just as any crack, or blur, or clouding, or other accident to the burning glass would interfere with its power and capacity from transmitting the rays, so, any accident or disease or pathological state of the organism would ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... was made by the direction, and at the expense of the Board of Longitude, for the purpose of exemplifying the principle of repetition when applied to a circle of so small a diameter as six inches, carrying a telescope of seven inches focal length, and one inch aperture; and of practically ascertaining the degree of accuracy which might be retained, whilst the portability of the instrument should be increased, by a reduction in the size to half the amount which had been previously ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... London and Provincial Photographic Association Mr. J. Traill Taylor, formerly of New York, commenced his lecture by referring to the functions of lenses, and by describing the method by which the necessary curves were computed in order to obtain a definite focal length. The varieties of optical glass were next discussed, and specimens (both in the rough and partly shaped state) were handed round for examination. The defects frequently met with in glass, such as striae and tears, were then treated upon; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... any thing reducible to a sensuous distinctness; and yet who can look into it, and not be conscious of a real though invisible presence? In the eye of a brute, we see only a part of the animal; it gives us little beyond the palpable outward; at most, it is but the focal point of its fierce, or gentle, affectionate, or timorous character,—the character of the species, But in man, neither gentleness nor fierceness can be more than as relative conditions,—the outward moods of his unseen spirit; ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston |
