"Optical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... true that, to a traveller approaching the Himalayas from any part of the great plain of India, these mountains present the appearance of a single range, stretching continuously along the horizon from east to west. This, however, is a mere optical illusion; and, instead of one range, the Himalayas may be regarded as a congeries of mountain ridges, covering a superficies of 200,000 square miles, and running in as many different directions as there are ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... already mentioned, is that they are meteorological or similar type balloons. This, however, does not explain reports that they travel at high speed or maneuver rapidly. But 'Saucer' men point out that the movement could be explained away as an optical illusion or actual acceleration of the balloon caused by a gas leak and later exaggerated by observers. . . . There are scores of possible explanations for the scores of different type ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... I could not imagine why she gazed about her with such obtrusive caution. She inspected the occupants of the various chairs around with deliberate scrutiny through a long-handled tortoise-shell optical abomination. None of them seemed to satisfy her. After a minute's effort, during which she also muttered a few words very low to her husband, she selected an empty spot midway between our group and the most distant group on the other side of us. In other words, she sat as far away from everybody ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... to Alice Faraday: and, now that he had drawn her away from the throng to this secluded nook and was about to put his fortune to the test, a horrible fear swept over him that he had overdone it. He was having optical illusions. ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... faded and was replaced by a gaze of mute astonishment as he observed that he had depicted Waller's right eye upon his chin, close beneath his nose! There seemed to be some sort of magic here, and he felt disposed to regard the thing in the light of some serious optical illusion, when, on closer inspection, he discovered Waller's mouth drawn altogether beyond the circle of his countenance, a foot or so above his head, on the stem of the tree against which he leaned. This changed the current ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... in making chemical glassware, since it resists the action of reagents better than the softer sodium glass. If lead oxide is substituted for the whole or a part of the lime, the glass is very soft, but has a high index of refraction and is valuable for making optical instruments and artificial jewels. ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... "That's an optical illusion. There are three parties, but each is dominated by the fifty families, and election laws are such that for all practical purposes it's impossible to start another party. Theoretically it's possible, actually it isn't. The ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... optical applications we may cite Mr. Leon Laurent's apparatus for controlling plane, parallel, perpendicular, and oblique surfaces, and magic mirrors obtained with an ordinary light; Mr. S.P. Thompson's apparatus for demonstrating the propagation ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... deadly wind before which all life goes down like a straw, that raged here in the winter. On every side, as far as the eyes could reach, wide white plains of undulating ice and snow, broken here and there by patches of barren rock, that seemed now by some optical delusion, against the glaring white, to be of the brightest mauve and violet tints. Only that; ice and snow and rock for mile upon mile, until the tale of three hundred and fifty is told. No track or trace of bird, no sweet companionship of little furred, four-footed things, no blade ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... member of a committee, to which Sir John Herschel and Mr. Dollond also belonged, appointed by the Royal Society to examine, and if possible improve, the manufacture of glass for optical purposes. Their experiments continued till 1829, when the account of them constituted the subject of a 'Bakerian Lecture.' This lectureship, founded in 1774 by Henry Baker, Esq., of the Strand, London, provides ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... brows. First a slim yellow circle, like the nimbus round the moon, took shape and grew sharp against the darkness; then this faded gradually, and there was the Face, wearing the same sad, sweet look it wore when he waved his hand to us across the awful water. This optical illusion kept ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... that I could be in either place by a sort of mental shift, something like staring at one of the geometrical optical illusions you can find in any psychology textbook in the chapter on illusions, and seeing ...
— The Gallery • Roger Phillips Graham
... a country place. I remember sending him a report of some rather remarkable manifestations of light witnessed at a private seance in London, under fairly good test-conditions. Dr. Tyndall was at the time engaged in some special optical investigations, and I asked him to spend five minutes in reading the notes enclosed. Dr. Tyndall's reply, in his laconic, jocular style, was to this effect—"I have spent five minutes as you desired, and it is a long time since I spent five minutes ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... spying, shrewish, unfriendly kind of fellow at his Court, applied to England in not many months hence, and got Williams sent away: ["22d January, 1751" (MS. LIST in State-Paper Office).] on to Russia, or I forget whither;—which did not mend the Hanbury optical-machinery on that side. The dull, tobacco-smoking Saxon-Polish Majesty, about whom he idly retails so many scandals, had never done ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... many yet living at Killarney, who solemnly declare that they have seen the chieftain on his May-morning ride. But these, if honest persons, have doubtless been deceived by singular appearances in the atmosphere, called optical illusions, or mirages. ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... scenery; an optical device which gave a distortion to the picture unless seen from a particular point; a relief, modelled to produce ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... matters that now bulk very large in the minds of men; a small theater, equal to none but very modest demands; a few engravings and plaster-casts and paintings—many of them very poor—to serve as a basis for theories of art; a little optical apparatus, a few minerals and plants and bones, to aid in the advancement of science; everything material on a small scale,—this was Weimar a hundred years ago. Truly a restricted outlook upon this spacious world as it ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... take example from the young artist, who aspires to visit the great Masters in Florence and in Rome. Till we have discovered some intellectual daguerreotype, which takes off the course of thought, and the form, lineaments, and features of truth, as completely and minutely, as the optical instrument reproduces the sensible object; we must come to the teachers of wisdom to learn wisdom, we must repair to the fountain, and drink there. Portions of it may go from thence to the ends of the earth by means of books; but the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... are programmed to reverse acceleration if they haven't made a target within a given time. This one should be back in less than six hours. If it first detects our ship, everything is all right. It has optical recognition circuits that identify any North American warcraft by type, disarm the war head, and steer it home. But, if it first comes within fifty kilometers of some other mass—like this asteroid or one of the companion rocks—it will detonate. We'll make every effort to intercept, but space ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... childish sobs, and the remembrance of that horror filled me with self-pity. Then, as the roots of my hair began to stir, my feet set themselves instinctively for flight. This instinct, however, I promptly and sternly repressed. I knew all about these optical illusions, and tried to congratulate myself on this opportunity for investigating one so interesting and vivid. At the same time I gave a hasty side-thought to what would have happened had I been one of the superstitious farmhands or fishermen of the district. I should have taken ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... so swollen now that it was closed to a mere slit. There was no optical delusion about its nomenclature and in diameter and chromatic depth it was at the head of its class; in fact, it gave promise of being by daylight in a class by itself. It was the sort of decoration which could be ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... hand—so placed between the light and the deed as to obscure the spot on which he was engaged. The unaccountable hand, however, was gone almost as soon as noticed." The clerk concluding that this was some optical delusion, proceeded with his work, and had come to the clause wherein the Master of Draycot disinherited his son, when again the same ghostly hand was thrust between ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... a curious optical effect, the spectators always see themselves in the personages who are good, tender, generous, heroic whom we place on the boards; and in the personages who are vicious or ridiculous they never see anyone but their neighbors. How can you expect then that ...
— How to Write a Play - Letters from Augier, Banville, Dennery, Dumas, Gondinet, - Labiche, Legouve, Pailleron, Sardou, Zola • Various
... among its profounder lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their momentary footsteps on beams of light. Though she had some indistinct idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed sway over the spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to look forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were answered, the procession of external existence flitted ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to induce the poor viscount to listen to reason. I made him touch the mirrors and the iron tree and the branches and explained to him, by optical laws, all the luminous imagery by which we were surrounded and of which we need not allow ourselves to be the victims, like ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... recognized law of optics to the astronomical theory, showing the true orbits of the heavenly bodies to be perfectly circular, and their orbital motions to be perfectly uniform." all irregularities being, I suppose, optical delusions. Mr. Von Gumpach is a learned man; what else, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... his head in his hands. He refused to see more. Whether ghost or optical illusion, an emanation from another world, or an image born of his remorse and proceeding from himself, it should torture his eyes ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... usually a Person to be convinced by Reason of the Thing, nor so easily rebuked, as to amend by Admonitions. I thought therefore fit to acquaint you with a convenient Mechanical Way, which may easily prevent or correct Staring, by an Optical Contrivance of new Perspective-Glasses, short and commodious like Opera Glasses, fit for short-sighted People as well as others, these Glasses making the Objects appear, either as they are seen by the naked Eye, or more distinct, though somewhat less than ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the work of chance? that no artificer had wrought here? that there was no purpose in this, no design, no guiding intelligence? The thing was incredible. In vain did Helmholtz declare that 'the eye has every possible defect that can be found in an optical instrument, and even some peculiar to itself,' and that 'if an optician tried to sell me an instrument which had all these defects I should think myself quite justified in blaming his carelessness in the strongest terms, and sending him back his instrument.' To ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... Brewster have described "Philosophical Transactions" 1836 page 65 a singular "artificial substance, resembling shell." It is deposited in fine, transparent, highly polished, brown- coloured laminae, possessing peculiar optical properties, on the inside of a vessel, in which cloth, first prepared with glue and then with lime, is made to revolve rapidly in water. It is much softer, more transparent, and contains more animal matter, than the natural incrustation at Ascension; but we here ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... strides, in a line parallel to their own course, the opposite ridge of a mountain, when divided from it by a narrow glen; and indeed the fact of the apparition is so generally admitted, that modern scepticism has only found refuge by ascribing it to optical deception. * ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... It is an optical deception, depending upon principles which I cannot well explain to you till you know more of that branch of science. But what a number of new ideas this afternoon's walk has afforded you! I do not wonder that you found it amusing; it has been very instructive, too. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... "The observer is the periscope itself. Any of the various fluorescing substances placed in the focus of the object-glass, or at the optical image in front of the eyepiece, will show the picture in the color peculiar to the fluorescing material. ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... true in the end with looking which is analogous to touching. The manner in which the libidinous excitement is frequently awakened is by the optical impression, and selection takes account of this circumstance—if this teleological mode of thinking be permitted—by making the sexual object a thing of beauty. The covering of the body, which keeps abreast with civilization, serves to arouse sexual inquisitiveness, which ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... probably gone by, as the day for the evolution of annulose segments and vertebrate skeletons has gone by,—on our planet, at least. In the line of our own development, all work of this kind stopped long ago, to be replaced by different methods. As an optical instrument, the eye had well-nigh reached extreme perfection in many a bird and mammal ages before man's beginnings; and the essential features of the human hand existed already in the hands of Miocene apes. But different ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... is mixed with bromide of silver emulsion, which is entirely free from nitrate of silver, no eosine silver can form; it acts, therefore, only as an optical sensitizer. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... them, Geordie, and though they are better than the others, I am not satisfied with these optical delusions, as I call them. Now, I put it to you, boys, is it natural for lads from fifteen to eighteen to command ships, defeat pirates, outwit smugglers, and so cover themselves with glory, that Admiral Farragut invites them to dinner, saying, 'Noble boy, you are an honour to your country!' Or, ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... colour-blindness was one of the cases in which Dalton, the original investigator of this optical defect, took special interest. At a later date (1859) he sent Yule, through Professor Wilson, skeins of coloured silks to name. Yule's elder brother Robert had the same peculiarity of sight, and it was also present in two earlier ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... our attention. It presents the most perfect optical illusion imaginable; in looking up to the ceiling, which is here very high, you seem to see the very firmament itself, studded with stars; and afar off, a comet with its long, bright tail. Not far from this Star Chamber, may be seen, in a cavity in the wall on the right, and about twenty feet above ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... to its adjustments the eye does not differ in principle from various other optical instruments, such as the microscope, telescope, photographer's camera, etc., which, in their use, form images of objects. These all require some adjustment of their parts, called focusing, which adapts them to the distance. The eye's method of focusing, however, differs from that of most optical ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... shelter of a corpse, should avoid the light is only natural; the strange part is its very perception. The maggot is blind. Its pointed fore part, which we hesitate to call a head, bears absolutely no trace of any optical apparatus; and the same with every other part of the body. There is nothing but one bare, smooth, white skin. And this sightless creature, deprived of any special nervous points served by ocular power, is extremely sensitive to the light. Its whole skin is ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... you at all. I have too much respect for you, and if I should happen to break my leg I don't know that there is another that I should prefer to yourself to treat me as a patient, but you have not discovered an optical instrument yet to tell what is going on ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... good as to listen. You know that optical instruments have acquired great perfection; with certain instruments we have succeeded in obtaining enlargements of 6,000 times and reducing the moon to within forty miles' distance. Now, at this distance, any objects sixty feet square would ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... in the vicinity of a convoy either by showing too much of her periscope or by a misdirected torpedo, the guard-ships on the flank attacked immediately dropped their smoke buoys as they continued moving at full speed. By this means an impenetrable optical barrier was interposed between the attacking submarine and the fleet of merchantmen under convoy. When thus shielded from attack—a submarine values her small stock of torpedoes (six to ten) too highly to risk the loss of one or more on something she cannot even ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... point; atom &c (small quantity) 32; fragment &c (small part) 51; powder &c 330; point of a pin, mathematical point; minutiae &c (unimportance) 643. micrometer; vernier; scale. microphotography, photomicrography, micrography^; photomicrograph, microphotograph; microscopy; microscope (optical instruments) 445. V. be little &c adj.; lie in a nutshell; become small &c (decrease) 36, (contract) 195. Adj. little; small &c (in quantity) 32; minute, diminutive, microscopic; microzoal; inconsiderable &c (unimportant) 643; exiguous, puny, tiny, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... The country, as a whole, must be educated up to the notion that sooner or later it is sure to be universally adopted, that it is only a question of time when this will be done. Already electrical, chemical and optical manufacturing concerns use the metric units and system exclusively. The system is also used widely in medicine and still other arts. Then all institutions of learning use the metric system exclusively whenever this is possible. ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... I suspected them at once. Still I pretended to turn Martha's whole story into a joke, and tried to explain to her how the darkness made us liable to have all kinds of optical illusions; so that when I left, and a servant was sent with a candle to light me on my way, the countess was quite sure that I had no suspicion. I had none; but I had more than that. As soon as I entered the garden, ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... Let no one say that matter must obstruct or dim the senses of the soul; that a body must act as a veil to the spirit, and shut out much knowledge. It is not so here. Matter helps us in the acquisition of knowledge, as, for example, glass in optical instruments. The telescope, with its lenses, gives the eye vast compass; the microscope gives it a power, equally wonderful, of minute vision. True, in these cases it is matter helping matter—glass assisting the eye; the analogy is ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... long,—but with regard to those near the top, Karl had great doubts. The shelves did not seem more distant from each other than those below, but their horizontal breadth appeared less. This might possibly be an optical delusion, caused by the greater distance from which they were viewed; but if so, it would not much mend the matter for the design which Karl had in view—since the deception that would have given him an advantage in the breadth would have been against ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... was nothing to me now, no more than if it had been some passing dream of summer sun-light and flowers; no more than if some optical illusion had dazzled my eyes and gladdened my heart for a short moment, and left me as suddenly again, with my tame and ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... did Mill see woman and all her works through an optical medium which gave images like this; but there was upon his retina a large blind area. By reason of this last it was inapprehensible to him that there could be an objection to the sexes co-operating indiscriminately in work. It was beyond his ken that the sex element would under these ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... second? or that there exist animated and regularly organised beings, many thousands of whose bodies laid close together would not extend an inch? But what are these to the astonishing truths which modern optical inquiries have disclosed, which teach us that every point of a medium through which a ray of light passes is affected with a succession of periodical movements, regularly recurring at equal intervals, no less than 500 millions ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... on my way in a condition of astonishment that engendered, almost, a doubt of my eyes; for if my sight was unimpaired and myself not subject to optical or mental delusion, neither boy nor dog nor bird nor cat, nor any other object of this visible world, had entered that opened door. Was my "finest" house, then, a place of call for wandering ghosts, who came home to roost at four in ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... quantity) 32; fragment &c. (small part) 51; powder &c. 330; point of a pin, mathematical point; minutiae &c. (unimportance) 643. micrometer; vernier; scale. microphotography, photomicrography, micrography[obs3]; photomicrograph, microphotograph; microscopy; microscope (optical instruments) 445.. V. be little &c. adj.; lie in a nutshell; become small &c. (decrease) 36, (contract) 195. Adj. little; small &c. (in quantity) 32; minute, diminutive, microscopic; microzoal; inconsiderable &c. (unimportant) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... specimens of this ware had been brought by the Portuguese from China, which were sold for more than their weight in gold. Bottgher was first induced to turn his attention to the subject by Walter von Tschirnhaus, a maker of optical instruments, also an alchemist. Tschirnhaus was a man of education and distinction, and was held in much esteem by Prince Furstenburg as well as by the Elector. He very sensibly said to Bottgher, still in fear of the gallows—"If you can't make gold, try and do something ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... perception of that underlying unity, for the demonstration of which he had been labouring since 1901. But the dream of his life was not yet realised. No direct method of obtaining response record was yet obtained. Hitherto the response recorder employed was a modification of the optical lever, automatic records being secured by the very inconvenient and tedious process of photography (which again introduced complications by subjecting a plant to darkness and thereby modifying its normal excitability); and ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... by phantasmagorists is further increased by the mystery that conceals, from the eyes of the public, their operations and optical instruments: but it is easy for the showman to snatch from them this superiority, and to strengthen the illusion for the children whom you choose to amuse with this sight. For that purpose, he has only to change the arrangement of the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... model of those formal but reverend manners which make what is called a gentleman of the old school, so called under an impression that the style is passing away, but which, I suppose, is an optical illusion, as there are always a few more of the class remaining, and always a few young men to whom these ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... sails away on the air and goes out of sight; then you throw up a clod and it doesn't. It comes down, every time. I have tried it and tried it, and it is always so. I wonder why it is? Of course it DOESN'T come down, but why should it SEEM to? I suppose it is an optical illusion. I mean, one of them is. I don't know which one. It may be the feather, it may be the clod; I can't prove which it is, I can only demonstrate that one or the other is a fake, and let a ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... This is an optical effect due to a peculiar condition of the desert atmosphere. The traveler suddenly sees trees, grass, and running water, apparently a short distance before him. He hastens eagerly forward to lie in the ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... an accidental ray of light broke upon him in a way not now intelligible, or barely intelligible. Half the extreme breadth intercepted between the circle and oval was 429/100,000 of the radius, and he remembered that the "optical inequality" of Mars was also about 429/100,000. This coincidence, in his own words, woke him out of sleep; and for some reason or other impelled him instantly to try making the planet oscillate in the diameter ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... strangely like Mr. Murray's. She leaned out and watched it till the cars swept round a curve, and lamp and figure and village vanished. How could he possibly be in Chattanooga? The conjecture was absurd; she was the victim of some optical illusion. With a long, heavily-drawn sigh, she leaned against the window-frame and looked at the dark mountain mass looming behind her; and after a time, when the storm drew nearer, she saw it only now and ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... curtains grow to a blaze, as if blown up by a pair of bellows; in another moment the gleams of flame grew brighter, and she fancied that three masked figures suddenly flashed out; but the terrible vision disappeared so swiftly that she took it for an optical delusion. ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... the mechanical skill displayed in the formation of the eye, and then the optical arrangements, or rather a few of them, for there are more than eight hundred distinct contrivances already observed by anatomists in the dead eye, while the great contrivance of all, the power of seeing, is utterly beyond their ken. I ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Glow-worm has her tricks for summoning her swains, the male, on his side, is provided with an optical apparatus suited to catch from afar the least reflection of the calling signal. His corselet expands into a shield and overlaps his head considerably in the form of a peaked cap or a shade, the object ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... and palms with long drooping creepers, and a blaze of brilliant orchids. Smoking-room, house, England, all were gone, and he sat on a settee in the heart of a virgin forest of the Amazon. It was no mere optical delusion or trick. He could see the hot steam rising from the tropical undergrowth, the heavy drops falling from the huge green leaves, the very grain and fibre of the rough bark which clothed the trunks. Even as he gazed a green mottled snake curled noiselessly ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... news story had come two nights before, when the Nipe had robbed an optical products company in Miami. The camera had shown the shop on the screen. Whatever had been used to blow open the door of the vault had been more effective than necessary. It had taken the whole front door of the shop and ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... he, "my ideas of natural beauty and those of the aesthetic Wilde may be entirely false; or the whole scene may be an optical illusion; or—Rosenduft und Maienblumen, observe ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... well known: the Scriptores Logarithmici[468] is a set of valuable reprints, mixed {207} with much which might better have entered into another collection. It is not so well known that there is a volume of optical reprints, Scriptores Optici, London, 1823, 4to, edited for the veteran of ninety-two by Mr. Babbage[469] at twenty-nine. This excellent volume contains James Gregory, Des Cartes, Halley, Barrow, and the optical writings of Huyghens, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... terror, she struck her hands to her eyes, as if to dispel an optical illusion, and sank half fainting, to be caught in the arms of her uncle and laid against the side of the rocks, while he sprinkled her face with water from ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... sickly, incredulous smile when they first heard the grim announcement and wondered whether, after all, the new head-master was an escaped lunatic. A few gifted with more presence of mind than others bethought them of visiting the shop and of dispelling the hideous nightmare by optical demonstration. ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... hollowed out into a cup and illuminated by narrow slits, has advantage over any shape or kind of glass protection. A French metal device of the same order that is advertised in the dealer's catalogues was found to fail, perhaps owing to a wrong optical arrangement of the slits. It caused an eye-strain that brought on headache. But if that principle could be scientifically worked out and such a device perfected, it would be a boon to the traveller over sun-lit snow, for it would do away with glass altogether, ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... We all have our particular mode of self-expression in moments of elation. Fillmore's took the shape of buying a new waistcoat and a hundred half-dollar cigars and being very fussy about what he had for lunch. It may have been an optical illusion, but he appeared to Sally to put on at least six pounds in weight on the first day of the new regime. As a serf looking after paper-knives and other properties, he had been—for him—almost slim. As a manager he blossomed out into soft billowy curves, and when he stood on the sidewalk ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... "Patrons of Astronomy," in the Mirror, No. 328, brought to my recollection the following anecdote, for the truth of which I can answer, having received it from Mr. Watson, well known as the most celebrated private optical instrument maker in Europe, and at the time living on intimate terms with the late Mr. Arnold, the most eminent watchmaker of the day. When the late Sir William Herschel's great telescope was first exhibited at Slough, among other scientific men who went to see it was Mr. Arnold, who ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... rolled up, heaving at levers, smiting with sledge-hammers, in full view of the street, on the margin of the canal, just above Central Street Bridge. I rubbed my eyes, half expecting that I was the subject of mere optical illusion; but a second look only confirmed the first. Around me were solemn, go-to-meeting faces,—smileless and awful; and close at hand were the delving, toiling, mud-begrimed laborers. Nobody seemed surprised at it; nobody noticed ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... mixture. The name was afterwards applied by G. Tschermak to those plagioclase felspars which lie between labradorite and anorthite; and this has been generally adopted by petrologists. In chemical composition and in optical and other physical characters it is thus much nearer to the anorthite end of the series than to albite. Like labradorite and anorthite, it is a common constituent of basic igneous rocks, such as gabbro and basalt. Isolated crystals of bytownite ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... of and to delude us; we call to our assistance the artifices of the charlatans, who do so many things which pass for supernatural in the eyes of the ignorant. Philosophers, by means of certain glasses, and what are called magic lanterns, by optical secrets, sympathetic powders, by their phosphorus, and lately by means of the electrical machine, show us an infinite number of things which the simpletons take for magic, because they know not how they ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... action of water. The hypothesis therefore must be classified under Xenogenesis, rather than under Abiogenesis. Such as it was, I think it will appear, to those who will be just enough to remember that it was propounded before the birth of modern chemistry, and of the modern optical arts, to be a most ingenious and ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... promontory have gradually faded away, until nothing has remained but the blue sky above, and the deep blue water below. Hence it was termed by the geographers of old, Aprositus, or the Inaccessible; while modern navigators have called its very existence in question, pronouncing it a mere optical illusion, like the Fata Morgana of the Straits of Messina; or classing it with those unsubstantial regions known to mariners as Cape Flyaway, and the Coast of ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... throat, and the swift disappearance of the vision immediately upon your full awakening—all well-known features of incubus," replied Mr. Berners. But again he thought of the shadow he had seen; now, however, only to dismiss the subject as an optical illusion. ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... other." Deuteronomy xxviii. 8: "Thy heaven over thee shall be as brass." Deuteronomy ii. 25: "This day I will begin to put the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven." And so commonly throughout the Bible, "the clouds of heaven," "the fowls of heaven," refer to the optical heavens. Such is the meaning in Genesis. Noah describes the deluge as it appeared to him, as covering all the hills within the horizon of observation, and Moses ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... motors, television sets, refrigerators and freezers, petroleum refining, shipbuilding (small ships), furniture making, textiles, food processing, fertilizers, agricultural machinery, optical ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... I told you of the singular experience I had some five or six years ago with an old astronomer, who thought he had established an optical telegraph to Mars?" ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... he had whipped out an opera-glass from his pocket, large enough to have been formed out of two moderate-sized specimens of the optical instrument he had named, and levelled it at the object on the wall. His observations and those of Harding through the same powerful instrument resulted in the same conclusion. The two red bars and one white one ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... the average individual. Longer gastroscopes are used, when necessary, to explore a ptosed stomach. Various lens-system gastroscopes have been devised, which afford an excellent view of the walls of the air-inflated stomach. The optical system, however, interferes with the insertion of instruments, so that the open-tube gastroscope is required for the removal of gastric foreign bodies, the palpation of, or sponging secretions from, gastric lesions. The open-tube gastroscope may be closed with a window plug (Fig. 6) having ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... only hope to call your attention to one phase of this important subject. For a number of years I have been practically interested in the subject of the production of plane and curved surfaces particularly for optical purposes, i.e., in the production of such surfaces free if possible from all traces of error, and it will be pleasant to me if I shall be able to add to the interest of this association by giving you some of my own ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... the approach of enemies; the eyes have no power to see. But we have not reached the ultimate accessible structure of this organ. If we place a portion of the surface under one of the finest of our most powerful lenses, this will be the result.[6] Now, without discussing the real optical or anatomical value of this result as it stands, what I desire to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... he exclaimed, "it is wonderful! I have succeeded! I have changed the principles of a lifetime, made the most brilliant optical experiment which any man of science has ever ventured to essay, with the result—well, you shall see. I have wired to the Admiralty, wired for more work-people. Captain Chalmers, is it not?" he ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of these overall complexities that must be met with automatic accuracy was the Starrett Analogue/Digital Computer, Optical Wave type 44-63, irreverently referred to by the acronymically-minded as Sad Cow, though more frequently as the Sacred Cow, ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... increasing in their acreage; and the farmhouses which had been without windows in their outer walls, now sometimes opened as many as two to the passing train. Flocks of black sheep and goats, through the optical illusion frequent in the Spanish air, looked large as cattle in the offing. Only in one place had we seen the tumbled boulders of Old Castile, and there had been really no greater objection to La Mancha than that it was flat, stale, and unprofitable ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... telescopes used. In these instruments two distinct functions may be observed: their light-gathering power depends on the diameter of their object mirror or lens, their defining power depends on the exquisite correctness of their optical surfaces. Grand instruments may possess the former quality in perfection by reason of their size, but the latter very imperfectly, either through want of original configuration, or distortion arising from flexure through their own weight. But, unless an instrument be perfect in this respect, as well ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... labourers. Political Condition of the Indians. Indian Village and huts. Cotton-spinning. The Indian Alcalde. Great Cave of Cacahuamilpan. Optical phenomenon. Monk on horseback. Religion of the Indians. Idols. Baptism by wholesale. Village amusements. Dancing. Chalma. The meson and the convent. Church-dances. The miller's daughter. Young friar. The Hill ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... Telecommunications Satellite Organization (Paris). Fiber-optic cable - a multichannel communications cable using a thread of optical glass fibers as a transmission medium in which the signal (voice, video, etc.) is in the form of ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... and found that he had a two-hour wait until the Mons Capa ferry left for Tangier, and spent the time wandering up and down Main Street, staring into the Indian shops with their tax-free cameras from Common Europe, textiles from England, optical equipment from Japan, and cheap souvenirs from everywhere. Gibraltar, the tourist's ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... the field was blurred, for a while, by the smoke from so much firing, which floated in thickening clouds over all the open spaces and the edges of the forest. It produced curious optical illusions. The French loomed through it, increased fourfold in numbers, every individual man magnified in size. He saw them lurid and gigantic, pulling the triggers of their rifles or muskets, or working the batteries. The cannon also grew ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... It is all an optical matter, a question of color. The pastel shades deceive him; the louder hues send him to his artillery. God help, I say, the red-haired girl! She goes into action with warning pennants flying. The dullest, blindest man can see her a mile away; he can catch ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... experienced it, form any idea of the optical illusions, which are produced by mist, in regions where the size of the objects which are visible through the fog is not known beforehand, and thus does not give the spectator an idea of the distance. ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... exhibits the same coloration when treated with iodine. As degradation proceeds, and the products become more and more soluble and diffusible, the blue reaction with iodine gives place first to a purple, then to a reddish colour, and finally the coloration ceases altogether. In the same way, the optical rotating power decreases, and the cupric reducing power (towards Fehling's solution) increases, as the process of hydrolysis proceeds. C. O'Sullivan was the first to point out definitely the influence of the temperature of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... last letter which Gordon sent from Khartoum closed with the words, 'The hosts are with me—Mahanaim.' Were they not, even though death was near? Was that sublime faith a mistake—the vision an optical delusion? No, for their ranks are arrayed around God's children to keep them from all evil while He wills that they should live, and their chariots of fire and horses of fire are sent to bear them to heaven when He ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... direction of the Pactolus claim. His only difficulty was that, as a matter of fact, the solitary mound of white earth which marked the entrance to the mine, suddenly appeared before his eyes in a double condition, and he beheld two Pactolus claims, which curious optical delusion rather confused him, inasmuch as he was undecided to which he ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... ophthalmology in a diagnosis of optical diseases, tell us of a symptom of infirmity which they call pseudoblepsis, or 'false sight.' Legal vision exhibits, now and then, a corresponding phase of unconscious perversion of sight, whereby objects are perceived ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... tension a little lower than that required for the positive ball: second, that when discharge does take place, much more passes at each time from the positive than from the negative surface (1491.). The last conclusion is very abundantly proved by the optical analysis of the positive and negative brushes already described (1468.), the latter set of discharges being found to recur five or six times oftener ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... see no very great difficulty (not more than in the case of many other structures) in believing that natural selection has converted the simple apparatus of an optic nerve merely coated with pigment and invested by transparent membrane, into an optical instrument as perfect as is possessed by any member ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... search after the Creator, in the light of natural theology. He goes through the proof for final cause and design, as given in a summary though clear, plain, and convincing form, in the pages of Paley and the "Bridgewater Treatises." The eye and the hand, those perfect instruments of optical and mechanical contrivance and adaptation, without the least waste or surplusage—these, say Paley and Bell, certainly prove a designing maker as much as the palace or the watch proves an architect or a watchmaker. Let this mind, in this state, cross Darwin's ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... enough! Her nose seems to have turned up more; but perhaps that's an optical illusion; she talks so sarcastically now-a-days that I seem to see it." Hannah smiled a little. "She doesn't think much of Jewish young men. By the way, are ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... accomplishing the result, was made many years before the instantaneous photograph became possible. While the first motion picture was not actually produced until the summer of 1889, its real birth was almost a century earlier, when Plateau, in France, constructed an optical toy, to which the impressive name of "Phenakistoscope" was applied, for producing an illusion of motion. This toy in turn was the forerunner of the Zoetrope, or so-called "Wheel of Life," which was introduced ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... gazing out of the window. He had always now, when he looked out of a window, the sensation of a man who was passing in rapid motion all the old familiar objects, all the landmarks of his life, or rather—for one never rids one's self of that particular optical delusion—it was as if they were passing. The conviction of one's own transit is difficult to achieve. Harry gazed out of the window, and it was to him as if the familiar trees which bordered the sidewalk, the shrubs in the yard, ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... ask Rochester about him the first thing to-morrow; and unless he is an optical illusion—which I vow I half believe is the case—I will come at the truth in spite of your demoniac ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... the way clear for actual work without further experiment. I have not been able by any arrangement of reflected light to get power enough to print negatives of the ordinary density, and have only succeeded by causing the light to be equally dispersed over the negative by a lens as used in the optical lantern, but the arrangements required are somewhat different to that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... beautiful nosegay in a vase, which appeared to be composed of the rarest flowers. I approached it with an intention of inhaling its fragrance, when, lo! my hand passed through it. It was an exquisite optical illusion. "Ah!" said my elegant and moralising companion, Madame S——, smiling, "of such flowers has Happiness composed her wreath: it is thus she gladdens with it the eye of Hope; but the hand of Expectation ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... to be glaring and grinning on me like a fiend, in the one instant of its duration. For the moment, it required all my knowledge of the settled calmness of his countenance, to convince me that my eyes must have been only dazzled by an optical illusion produced by ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... Bowman has observed the hereditary tendency in this direction to be heightened, and some of the children to be myopic at an earlier age or in a higher degree than their parents. Thirdly, squinting is a familiar example of hereditary transmission: it is frequently a result of such optical defects as have been above mentioned; but the more primary and uncomplicated forms of it are also sometimes in a marked degree transmitted in a family. Fourthly, Cataract, or opacity of the crystalline lens, is commonly observed in persons whose parents have been similarly ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin |
