"Oscillating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and many a time cross'd the river of old, Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies, Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left the rest in strong shadow, Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south, Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water, Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... left, and went past the Board of Trade Office hoping for signs of the Medea, for I had heard she was assembling a crew that morning. But the marine-store shops, with their tarpaulin suits hanging outside open-armed and oscillating, looked across to the men lounging against the shipping-office railings, and the idlers stared across at the tarpaulins. It did not appear to be a place where anything was destined to happen. ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... new chapels; welcome to do so, to all lengths. Popery cannot come back, any more than Paganism can,—which also still lingers in some countries. But, indeed, it is with these things, as with the ebbing of the sea: you look at the waves oscillating hither, thither on the beach; for minutes you cannot tell how it is going; look in half an hour where it is,—look in half a century where your Popehood is! Alas, would there were no greater danger to our ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... no easy matter to dress and undress in an oscillating room. That the vessel's motion could have changed so markedly within the one hour since he left the cabin, astonished Frederick. The simple operation of drawing off his boots and trousers, finding others in his trunk, and putting them ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... made on water pipes at high pressure, and of various diameters. Of machines worked by water pressure the author proposes to refer only to two which appear to him in every respect the most practical and advantageous. One is the piston machine of M. Albert Schmid, engineer at Zurich. The cylinder is oscillating, and the distribution is effected, without an eccentric, by the relative motion of two spherical surfaces fitted one against the other, and having the axis of oscillation for a common axis. The convex surface, which is movable and forms part of ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... 1860. USNM 192872; 1951. A hand-crank operated the winnowing mill for separating grain from chaff and beans from hulls. A four-blade, wooden fan, shaped like a paddle wheel, blows a draft below oscillating screens. The chaff is blown off from the threshed grain, and the grain or beans fall from the screens into the path of the draft. The screens catch any straw left after threshing. Gift of Arden Wilson, Harrisville, ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
... the problem of coadaptation in sterile animals can thus be satisfactorily explained. If the determinants are oscillating upwards and downwards in continual fluctuation, and varying more pronouncedly now in one direction now in the other, useful variations of every determinant will continually present themselves anew, and may, in the course of generations, ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... our precious beverage, I pulled out watch and compass to notice duration and direction of the shock. It was undulatory, very violent, and oscillating from S.S.W. to N.N.E. The duration was exactly four minutes two seconds. The earthquake began at 5.20 P.M. and ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... crossing of the roads the name Fairfield on the sign-post seemed to be the thing that tipped the oscillating balance of decision in favor ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... from the peculiar oscillating or swinging movements that the plant exhibits. The most marked movement is a swaying from side to side, combined with a rotary motion of the free ends of the filaments, which are often twisted together like the strands of a ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... 9 is a gin which goes by the name of the "single-acting Macarthy gin," so called because it has only one oscillating blade for removing the fibre from the seed. The back of the machine is shown in the figure. This process at the best is a brutal one, especially when certain gins are employed, but the one figured here is considered to do little damage to the fibre ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... beneath your window, you will not, till another season, hear the wood thrush in all his matchless eloquence. The bobolink has become careworn and fretful, and blurts out snatches of his song between his scolding and upbraiding, as you approach the vicinity of his nest, oscillating between anxiety for his brood and solicitude for his musical reputation. Some of the sparrows still sing, and occasionally across the hot fields, from a tall tree in the edge of the forest, comes the rich note of the scarlet tanager. This tropical-colored bird loves the hottest weather, and I hear ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... grasping his tumbler in a passionate manner and smashing it upon the marble slab, causing a sudden emeute in the camp. "Order! order! order!" was sounded from every tongue. "You mustn't be afeard, Captain," said one of the party. "This is perfectly South Carolinian-just the oscillating of the champagne; it ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... electric current. 2. The effect upon other circularly vibrating bodies within that field of force corresponding to the action and reaction of electric currents upon one another. 3. The effect on pulsating and oscillating bodies similarly immersed, illustrating the mutual effects upon one another of magnets and electric currents. The first of these effects is one of induction, and, from what has been said from an earlier part of this article, it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... from her body, and held it by the tail high above her. The hideous creature stretched up its head towards the roof of the cavern, which it was just able to reach. It then began to move its head backwards and forwards, with a slow oscillating motion, as if looking for something. At the same moment the witch began to walk round and round the cavern, coming nearer to the centre every circuit; while the head of the snake described the same path over the roof that she did over the floor, for she kept holding it up. ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... difficult for him to master himself. He begged her to tell him what she was thinking of. She answered. He listened. Then, as if she had said nothing, he begged her again, still harder, to tell him. There he was, uncertain, oscillating between night and day. All he needed was for her to say one word, if he only believed it. You saw him, in the immense city, clinging to that one being. The next instant I was separated from these two lovers who ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... disappear in the distance; then they would cross each other like network. Again they would arrange themselves in bows, dart out with arrowing points, shoot into towers and form crowns. It might have been fancied the creation of a kaleidescope, into which the hand of a magician had cast jets of life, oscillating and floating under every form. At the same time, there was heard in the air a sound like that accompanying the discharge ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... insufficient means. The most daring strategical moves of the enemy, in war as in diplomacy, they ridiculed as either bluff or madness. The journalistic campaign in neutral countries they scoffed at as vain, and put their faith in the final triumph of truth. Their financial measures, oscillating from one extreme to another, denoted the absence of any settled plan, of any clear-cut picture of the needs of the moment. The odds in their favour, which circumstance had given and circumstance might take away again, they looked upon as inalienable, until they ended by forfeiting them ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... finger, on either side. The bottom is formed of three very large stems of bamboo, and a sort of wickerwork extends from these upward to the supporting canes, which are about six feet from side to side, and may in crossing just be grasped by the hands. The bridge has a peculiar oscillating motion, which increases so much at the centre, together with an up-and-down movement, that, with a sight of the fiercely rushing water beneath, the traveler's head is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... personally at the games. He retained still less of those half-patriotic, half-selfish hopes, which in countries of free constitution allure every youth of talent into the political arena, and which he too like all others probably at one time felt. In such a life as his was, oscillating between passionate intoxication and more than sober awaking, illusions are speedily dissipated. Wishing and striving probably appeared to him folly in a world which withal was absolutely governed by chance, and in which, if men were to strive after anything ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... second time for the man's safety, and by great exertions tried to release him from his perilous condition; but our efforts were not a little crippled by the legs of the Norwegian, which he flung violently about at every possible tangent; and one arm, moving with the rapid oscillating motion of a steam-engine, brought the fist in sharp contact with the other Norwegian's chest, and threw him, head over heels, into the identical pool whence he had himself ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... wireless telegraph transmitter employs a disruptive discharge, or spark, as it is called, for setting up the oscillating currents in the aerial wire system and this is the type of apparatus described in this chapter. There are two ways to set up the sparks and these are: (1) with an induction coil, or spark-coil, as it is commonly called, and (2) with an alternating current transformer, ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... be materially assisted by this depression" (loc. cit., page 327).) believe that the main part of his great denudation was effected during a vast (almost gratuitously assumed) slow Tertiary subsidence and subsequent Tertiary oscillating slow elevation. So our high cliff argument is inapplicable. He seems to think his great subsidence only FAVOURABLE for great denudation. I believe from the general nature of the off-shore sea's bottoms that it is almost necessary; do look ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... of the measuring apparatus by citing Ducretet's non-oscillating galvanometer, Sir William Thomson's amperemeters, voltameters, ohmmeters, and mhosmeters, constructed and exhibited by Breguet, and a new aperiodic galvanoscope of Mr. Maiche. Mr. Baudot exhibited the recent improvements that he has made in his multiplex printing telegraph, and M. Boudet of Paris ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... shrubs having their roots in the crevices, and hanging down in broad sheets of the brightest green. As we sailed on we perceived lofty palms rising amid the matted mass of vegetation, and from their crests hung long feathered leaves, silently and gracefully oscillating in the light air which filled ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... themselves. In the vast cosmical changes the universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, enveloping all in the invisible mystery of the emanations, losing no dream from no single sleep, sowing an animalcule here, crumbling a star there, oscillating and winding in curves; making a force of Light, and an element of Thought; disseminated and indivisible, dissolving all save that point without length, breadth, or thickness. The MYSELF; reducing everything ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... faded. Love—and this ridiculous George vowed he was in love—love is a mental see-saw. The nicely- balanced mind is set suddenly oscillating: now up, commandingly above the world, intoxicated with the rush and the elevation; now down to depths made horribly deep by contrast, wretchedly jarred by ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... one of the old wired bells, and it sprang backwards and forwards so violently under the impulse of the unseen pull that the other bells ranged alongside responded to the vibration by oscillating in sympathy. ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... permission to revisit Field Place, and had an allowance made him of 200 pounds a year. His uncle, Captain Pilfold of Cuckfield, was instrumental in effecting this partial reconciliation. Shelley spent some time at his uncle's country house, oscillating between London, Cuckfield, and Field Place, with characteristic rapidity, and paying one flying visit to his cousin Grove at Cwm Elan, near Rhayader, in North Wales. This visit is worth mention, since he now for the first time saw the scenery ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... the primary department to the graduating class. Those four were notably the most advanced and the only thoroughly-grounded boys of the sixteen. A few of the others had attended nearly all the private schools in the city, while two of them had been oscillating between the public and private schools for years at their own sweet wills, and could never decide whether the commercial or classical department of the school in question was the one for which they were best fitted. It may well be understood, therefore, what a medley my classes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... The length of each oscillating link of the straight-line linkage was thus reduced to one-fourth instead of one-half the beam length, and the entire mechanism could be constructed so that it would not extend beyond the end of the working beam. This arrangement ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... let us again insist that the Earth,—a splendid orb as viewed from Mercury, Venus, and Mars,—begins to disappear from Jupiter, where she becomes no more than a tiny spark oscillating from side to side of the Sun, and occasionally passing in front of him as a small black dot. From Saturn the visibility of our planet is even more reduced. As to Uranus and Neptune, we are invisible there, at least to eyes constructed like ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... dark lines of troops could be seen almost as clearly as by day. Their positions were distinctly marked, however, by the flashes from the rifles, coming thick and fast, making them look, as they moved along, bending and oscillating, like rolling waves of flame, throwing off fiery spray. When my brigade had moved far around upon the left, and had taken position, obliquing toward the enemy's rear, it suddenly opened. The Federal line recoiled, ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... beheld in his childish scratchings and barbarous glimmerings; Indian, Egyptian, and Assyrian art in his boyish rigidity and crude fixedness of idea and purpose; Mediaeval, or pre-Raffaelle art is seen in his youthful timid darings, his unripe fancies oscillating between earth and heaven; there where we expect truth, we see conceit; there where we want little, much is given—now a blank eyed riddle,—dark with excess of self,—now a giant thought—vast but repulsive,—and now angel visitors ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... perfection of modern machine-tools is such that the utmost possible precision is secured, and the mechanical engineer can calculate on a degree of exactitude that does not admit of a deviation beyond the thousandth part of an inch. When the powerful oscillating engines of the 'Warrior' were put on board that ship, the parts, consisting of some five thousand separate pieces, were brought from the different workshops of the Messrs. Penn and Sons, where they had been made by workmen who knew not the places they were to occupy, and ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... chiefly of bygone days. Almost every speech began with "Do you remember?" Vixen was gayer than she had been for a long time, save once or twice, when a pang shot through her heart at the idea that Bullfinch was being shaken about in a railway-box, oscillating helplessly with every vibration of the train, ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... of sustaining itself on the height of dependence on the unseen, spiritual power of God, and was ever oscillating between alliances with the Northern and Southern powers, linking itself with Assyria against Egypt, or with Egypt against Assyria. The effect was that whichever was victorious it suffered; it was the battleground for both, it was the prize of each in turn. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... wires from the battery up and down outside the pile of helices, it was clear that an upward and downward movement of the rod would follow, 'and that a shackle-bar attached from this oscillating rod, and to a crank, would convert this reciprocating motion into a continuous one.' To this contrivance the name of 'Jumper' was given, of which one was exhibited, the helices weighing 800 lbs., and the rod ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... avoided taking sides except where sides were already fixed. Americanism would have been bad form in the liberal Edinburgh Review; it would have seemed eccentric even for a Scotchman, and Reeve was a Saxon of Saxons. To an American this attitude of oscillating reserve seemed more eccentric than the reckless hostility of Brougham or Carlyle, and more mischievous, for he never could be sure what preposterous ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... carried on a pivot like a small compass needle. This sphere follows the pole of a vibrating sphere which is presented to it, as the pole of a magnet would do, with this difference always, that in the magnet, like poles repel, while in oscillating bodies like ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... straight up from below drew the weight of her body towards the abyss. It seemed to her that the ground of the oscillating square went up the walls and that the floor dipped on end like a tossing boat. She was right at the edge, almost hanging, surrounded by vast space. The blue of the heavens suffused her, the air was whirling in her hollow head; she had but to yield, to let herself be taken; ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... sudden I see a globular mass with a moon-like face oscillating in the night. With hands held out and groping for the rails of the bedsteads, it is seeking its way. The orb of its belly distends and stretches its shirt like a crinoline, and shortens it. The mass is carried by two little and extremely slender legs, knobbly at the knees, and the color of string. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... village was an eccentric, ne'er-do-well fellow, named Keezar, who led a wandering, unsettled life, oscillating, like a crazy pendulum, between Haverhill and Amesbury. He had a smattering of a variety of trades, was a famous wrestler, and for a mug of ale would leap over an ox-cart with the unspilled beverage in his hand. On one occasion, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... did not do. Once out of the inlet, they went about and headed northward, up the coast, and we remained watching them until Mr. Trevor became a mere oscillating black speck ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... country, continually experience every shock that thrills the Earth's crust? At sea, where between waves or winds or paddles or screws or machinery, everything is tremor, quiver or jar? In the air, where the balloon is incessantly twirling, oscillating, on account of the ever varying strata of different densities, and even occasionally threatening to spill you out? The Projectile alone, floating grandly through the absolute void, in the midst of the profoundest silence, could ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... six days I had been oscillating within a pretty complete circumference of alarms. It is small blame to me, I hope, that with my nerve on so nice a pivot, I quivered and swung to this new apprehension like a needle ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on the 7th September by the dervish steamer "Tewfikieh." I boarded her and had a long chat with the captain (reis) and members of the crew, all of whom wore jibbehs. The little craft was an ex-Thames, above-the-bridges, penny steamer with Penn's oscillating engines. She was one of the boats Gordon sent from Khartoum in 1884 to meet the Desert Column at Metemmeh. She was, if possible, more dilapidated-looking than ever. By guarded questioning I ascertained that the "Tewfikieh" was three ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... tea or coffee boiler, the base, D, so constructed and adapted, relatively to the other parts, that an oscillating motion will be imparted to the vessel by process of ebullition, substantially as shown ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... the kitchen the roast beef and turkey were meeting their deserts. Up in the store-room—for Lady Georgiana was not above housekeeping, any more than her daughter—the ladies of the house were doing their part; and I was oscillating between my uncle and his niece, making myself amazingly useful now to one and now to the other. The turkey and the beef were on the table, nay, they had been well eaten, before I felt that my moment was come. Outside, the wind was howling, and driving the snow with soft ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... breath of hesitation between giving the alarm and following Alice silently and alone, he chose the latter. He was a swift runner and light footed. With a few bounds he reached the little gate, which was still oscillating on its hinges, darted through and away, straining every muscle in desperate pursuit, gaining rapidly in the race, which bore eastward along the course twice before chosen by Alice ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... himself down, as it were, into his clothes, and stood in the middle of the hearthrug, gently oscillating, with his hands behind his back. But at some faint rumour out of the silent house his posture suddenly stiffened, and he lifted a little, with heavy, steady lids, ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... who was much embarrassed the day after his arrival at Bayonne, when, having been invited to dine with the Emperor, it was necessary to enter a modern carriage with two steps. He did not dare to put his foot on the frail things, which he feared would break under his weight; and the oscillating movement of the body of the carriage made him terribly ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... be effective in the present predicament of a human race (oscillating uneasily between the possibility of social advance and the probability of recession into another Dark Age of ignorance, superstition and social stagnation), must include certain essential elements. ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... the platform begged them to hasten and to get in anywhere they could. A moment afterwards they jumped into the carriage, and the train rolled with a slight oscillating motion out of the station into the open country. Dim masses of trees, interrupted by spires and roofs, were painted upon a huge orange sky that somehow reminded them ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... nonentity {72} enveloping the being of its datum; and as that leads nowhere, back recoils the thought toward its datum again. But there is no natural bridge between nonentity and this particular datum, and the thought stands oscillating to and fro, wondering "Why was there anything but nonentity; why just this universal datum and not another?" and finds no end, in wandering mazes lost. Indeed, Bain's words are so untrue that in reflecting men ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... that matter, so simple in appearance, is wonderfully complicated in its vital structure,—and that other discovery, that its molecules, oscillating with a rapidity almost infinite, convey their impressions to the surrounding ether, which, in turn, transmits them over inconceivable distances, in an inconceivably short space of time,—these discoveries lead us to the even more marvellous discovery, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... now, oscillating from side to side. The hole seemed to travel in a wavering loop, dipping lower, swinging up high, then ...
— Gambler's World • John Keith Laumer
... hideous reptile, which was evidently gliding over the earth when it detected his approach. It instantly threw itself into coil, and with its flat triangular head upraised and slowly oscillating back and forth, waited for the intruder to come within reach ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... belonged to the first of these classes. There is a measure of elusiveness about his life. Our lack of knowledge respecting him, however, is due in part to the fact that near the close of his life, while he was oscillating in a half-rational condition between Andover and Boston, with an occasional visit to Plymouth, he fell into a fit of pessimism and despair during which he spent two days in obliterating the materials for his biography, by destroying all his letters and manuscripts. He did as ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... made in several sizes (from 3 to 50 degrees of arc) in black, but the smallest size should also be prepared in colors matching the several discs. Such a disposition, then, presents a disc of fused color, rotating at a uniform rate, and in front of this a radial sector oscillating from side to side concentrically with the disc, and likewise at a uniform rate. Several variations of this apparatus will be described as the need and purpose ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... great serpent was oscillating like a pendulum, its little tongue playing like forked red lightning, its loathsome red eyes holding his own. Terror gripped his heart, and his soul curdled. He would have cried out, but that his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... and continental needle telegraphy in which the message is transmitted by the movements of an index normally vertical, but oscillating to one side or the other under the influence of the current, the latter being controlled by the transmitter of the message, the left hand swings of the needle are interpreted as dots, the ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... whom Coronado met when he reached the house was Aunt Maria, oscillating from one invalid to the other in such fright and confusion that she did not know whether she was strong-minded or not; but thus far chiefly troubled about Garcia, who seemed to her to be in a ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... lying next to Constans touched him on the arm, directing his attention to a squad of the defenders who were working to dislodge one of the massive coping-stones of the gateway arch. Already it was oscillating under the heave of the levers; if it fell, a score of men might be crushed beneath its weight, and the destruction of the testudo would be a certainty. Constans raised his rifle. It was a long shot, but he could not wait to take ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... chances of its warfare is born that incessant ebb and flow of chemical change, that inability to reach an equilibrium, which we term "vitality." The course of life, like that of a flying express train, is not a perfectly straight line, but an oscillating series of concentric curves. Without these oscillations movement could not be. Exaggerate one of them unduly, or fail to rectify it by a rebound oscillation, and ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... the colony under observation. Crouching in the sun, near a burrow, she waits. As soon as the Halictus arrives from her harvesting, her legs yellow with pollen, the Gnat darts forth and pursues her, keeping behind her in all the turns of her oscillating flight. At last, the Bee suddenly dives indoors. No less suddenly the other settles on the mole-hill, quite close to the entrance. Motionless, with her head turned towards the door of the house, she waits ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... angle formed by a rude inlet of the Thames, which was running smoothly towards the sea at the pace of four miles an hour. The tide unites here with the ordinary current, and, running a few miles above this place, exhibits twice a day the finely-reduced edge of that physical balance-wheel or oscillating fluid-pendulum which creates the earth's centrifugal power, varies the centre of its forces, and holds in equilibrium that delicately adjusted pressure of the medium of space, which pressure, without such balance, would, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... shown another application of the controlling valve and cut-off described above. Two oscillating steam cylinders are employed in working the rudder. They are placed on opposite sides of the chest, A, and are supplied with steam through the controlling valve, B. The piston rods of the two cylinders are connected with cranks placed on opposite ends of the ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... 'Little-Flower-of-the- Wood'; she was very chic, very popular. She had her appartement in the avenue Wagram, she drove to the stage-doors in her coupe, her photographs were sold like confetti at a carnival. Well, one afternoon, when Dupont's reflections were oscillating between the bankruptcy court and the Morgue, he was stupefied to receive a message from her—she bade him reserve a table for herself and some friends for ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... solenoids moved their contacts and the filaments turned cherry red. Oscillating circuits hummed silently to themselves in perfect Q. The life warmth of hysteresis pulsed and throbbed along wires and channels. Three-plus-one, two-plus-two—tell me which is really true. The problem criss-crossed in and ...
— Two Plus Two Makes Crazy • Walt Sheldon
... Young also discerned a fundamental difference between the waves of light and those of sound. Could you see the air through which sound-waves are passing, you would observe every individual particle of air oscillating to and fro, in the direction of propagation. Could you see the luminiferous ether, you would also find every individual particle making a small excursion to and fro; but here the motion, like that assigned to the water-particles above referred to, would be across the line of propagation. ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... braying, the mother bird suddenly ducks her head, with the mandibles of her beak wide agape, between which the fledgling thrusts its head, almost out of sight, and so keeps it for more than a minute. Finally, withdrawing it, up again goes the head of the mother, with neck craned out, and oscillating from side to side in a second spell of speech-making. These curious actions are repeated several times, the entire performance lasting for a period of nearly a quarter of an hour. When it ends, possibly from the food supply having become exhausted, the mother bird leaves the little glutton to ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... and twenty horse-power, with oscillating cylinders, took up but little space; its force was large for a vessel of one hundred and seventy tons, which carried a great deal of sail, and was, besides, remarkably swift. Of her speed the trial trips left no doubt, and even the boatswain, Johnson, had seen fit to express his opinion to the ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... how long we confronted each other I know not. It must have been some minutes. Her eyes contracted and expanded, the pupil elongated and then opened out into a round lustrous globe. I could see the lithe tail oscillating at its extreme tip, with a gentle waving motion, like that of a cat when hunting birds in the garden. I seemed to possess no will. I believe I was under a species of fascination, but we continued our ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... of the winter Trina's emotions, oscillating at first from one extreme to another, commenced to settle themselves to an equilibrium of calmness and placid quietude. Her household duties began more and more to absorb her attention, for she was an admirable housekeeper, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... diameter, is made in the side of a reservoir of compressed air, the latter rushes out violently; and if a plate of metal or wood, seven inches in diameter, be pressed towards the opening, it will, after the first repulsive action of the current of air is overcome, be apparently attracted, rapidly oscillating within a short distance of the opening, out of which the air continues to emit with considerable force. This curious circumstance is explained on the supposition, that the current of air, on escaping through the opening, expands itself into a thin disc, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... had been derived in kittenhood from the manner in which she purred—a measured, oscillating sound, shifting from high to low, as comfortable and often as continuous as the unobtrusive pulse of an old clock. It was the first time, Telzey realized now, that she'd heard the sound since their arrival on Jontarou. It went on for a dozen ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... the evening, spent in that strangely noisy, oscillating, onward-rushing dwelling-place of a railway-carriage, was not without a certain subdued brightness of intercourse and conversation. Katherine was neither preoccupied nor distrait, or unamused even by the small accidents and absurdities of travel. Later, while preparations ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Capua, whose eyes had been for some time oscillating with indecision between Helen Heath and Mrs. Laudersdale. "Hannibal Raleigh's my name; though Massa alwes call me Cap," he added, insinuatingly,—which, by the way, "Massa" never had ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... holding tightly to the purlin — for the waves made the masts tremble with their violence — I tried to look around and below me. The sea was literally raging beneath, and great masses of livid-looking foam were dashing be- tween the masts, which were oscillating terrifically. It was still dark, and I could only faintly distinguish two figures in the stern, whom, by the sound of their voices, that I caught occasionally above the tumult, I made out to ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... evaded to-day and subjugated to-morrow. The past, with its starved ambitions, its tragic failures, its blighting despondencies, melted away from him into obscurity; and he remembered only the brief alternating hours of ecstasy and of accomplishment. With his wind-blown, flame-like temperament, oscillating in the heat of youth between the inclinations he miscalled convictions, he was still, though Cyrus had disowned him, only a romantic variation from the Treadwell stock. Somewhere, in the depths of his being, the essential Treadwell persisted. He hated Cyrus as a man hates ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... whenever she went wrong by giving the unfortunate fowls an extra spin, which made their chance of ever getting cooked exceedingly doubtful. But it was pleasant cookery too. Meantime Miss Lavinia, oscillating between the kitchen and the opposite room, prepared the dining-table in the latter chamber. This office she (always doing her household spiriting with unwillingness) performed in a startling series of whisks and bumps; laying the table-cloth as if she were raising the wind, putting ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... he had not been successful in private practice. He was like somebody trying to protect a raw surface from heat and cold; so cursed with diffidence, and so sensitive about his boyish appearance that he chose to shut himself up in an oscillating wooden coop on the sea. The long run to Australia had exactly suited him. A rough life and the pounding of bad weather had fewer terrors for him than an office in town, with constant exposure to ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... substances are really simple. Each yields a spectrum having lines varying in number from two to eighty or more, every one of which implies the intercepting of ethereal undulations of a certain order by something oscillating in unison or in harmony with them. Were iron absolutely elementary, it is not conceivable that its atom could intercept ethereal undulations of eighty different orders. Though it does not follow that its molecule contains as many separate atoms as there are lines in its spectrum, it must clearly ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... heard Kennedy mutter almost to himself, with a view to showing Pedersen that he knew something about it. "Break system relay—operator can overhear any interference while transmitting—transformation by a single throw of a six-point switch which tunes the oscillating and open circuits to resonance. Very clever—very efficient. By the way, Pedersen, are you the only person aboard who ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... individual—a caprice of vanity by those who do not know Lord Carlisle's personal qualities, a caprice of patriotic benevolence by those who do. According to the construction of the case as thus indicated, oscillating between a question of profound revolution moving subterraneously amongst us, and a purely personal question, such a discussion would ascend to the philosophic level, or sink to the level of gossip. The other direction of the public surprise points ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... extended branch of the nearest cypress hung the half-witted boy by one arm, which he had cast over the limb, and from whence he was now oscillating like a pendulum, his head hanging down upon his breast, and the rest of his limbs as moveless seemingly, as though he had hung there for months. It was one of the queer odd freaks that he was so often performing, for what purpose no one knew, and there he ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... silently and with difficulty; for the car was oscillating so greatly that they were obliged to hold on, by its side, not to be thrown out. The descent was less rapid than it had been, but ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... feet and, rigid still, but oscillating from side to side, as though his strength did not suffice to hold him quite erect, was surveying them with eyes sunk so deeply in his head that they looked like dying sparks reanimated for an ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... the engine and paddle wheels[8] are reproduced in figure 4. The nonoscillating engine is inclined toward the paddle-wheel shaft. The connecting rod operates a crosshead to which is pivoted a pitman, or oscillating rod, that operates the paddle-wheel crankshaft. Alongside the steam cylinder is an air pump cylinder, also connected to the crosshead. The steam inlet and outlet pipes enter a valve chest on top of the steam cylinder, which is described as being 1.035 meters (3.4 feet) in diameter, and of 1.5 ...
— The Pioneer Steamship Savannah: A Study for a Scale Model - United States National Museum Bulletin 228, 1961, pages 61-80 • Howard I. Chapelle
... the scheme I shall have an opportunity of watching an interesting variant of the trapeze act. We shall get the people, who own the existing cash registers on the swing and then hold them to ransom. We shall set our small trapeze oscillating right across their airy path and decline to remove it unless they agree to part with some of the very shiniest of their spangles and hand them over to us for our adornment. I wondered how Ascher, who is so deeply ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... appear engrossed in another portion of the paper. But I could not refrain from darting a look at my fellow-traveller. To my horror I perceived that the paper he was reading was the same as the one I had; and that the page between which and myself his eyes were uncomfortably oscillating was the very page on which the ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... fort offers but a small mark,—the opening of the embrasures, a small part of the carriage, and now and then a head or arm raised above the parapet,—the ratio of exposed surfaces being not less than twenty to one. In the vessel the guns are fired from an oscillating deck, and the balls go at random; in the fort the guns are fired from an immoveable platform, and the balls reach their object with unerring aim. There is always more or less motion in the water, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... remained in this position seven minutes and ate a meal during the interval. There were two clowns at the Cirque Franconi who duplicated this feat, and the program called their dinner "Un dejouner en tete-a-tete." Some other persons perform wonderful feats of a similar nature on an oscillating trapeze, and many similar performances have been witnessed by the spectators of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... bordered the lawn. I found it out when I was sitting on the garden seat near by, learning Latin irregular verbs. I saw the minute preposterous round birds going and coming, and I found something so absurdly amiable and confiding about them—they sat balancing and oscillating on a standard rose and cheeped at me to go and then dived nestward and gave away their secret out of sheer impatience—that I could not bring myself to explore further, and kept the matter altogether secret from the enthusiasm ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... curiosity of the public, our friend the poetical young gentleman was in ecstasies—not of disgust, but admiration. 'Heavens!' cried the poetical young gentleman, 'how grand; how great!' We ventured deferentially to inquire upon whom these epithets were bestowed: our humble thoughts oscillating between the police officer who found the criminal, and the lock-keeper who found the head. 'Upon whom!' exclaimed the poetical young gentleman in a frenzy of poetry, 'Upon whom should they be bestowed but upon the murderer!'—and thereupon it came out, in a fine torrent of eloquence, that ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... them as so many outlived stages, but also fearing and fleeing them because they know his secrets, pry into his plans, watch his rise with envy, and look forward to his fall with pleasure. From this relationship springs his dual, indeterminate character, oscillating between love of distinction and hatred of those who have already achieved it. He says himself that he is an aristocrat, and has learned the secrets of good company. He is polished on the outside and coarse within. He knows already how to wear the frock-coat with ease, but ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... and were protesting against the creature's tyranny. Their master was working them too hard. I ran up the stair on all fours: it was my way when I was in a hurry. Swinging went the pendulum in the window, and the wind roared in the chimney. I seized hold of the oscillating thing, and stopped it; but to my amaze and consternation, the moment I released it, on it went again. I must sit and hold it. But the voice of my aunt called me from below, and as I dared not explain why I would rather ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... abates nothing from our vigor, and it is hard to understand the stifled and struggling manner in which my generation of common young men did its thinking. To think at all about certain questions was an act of rebellion that set one oscillating between the furtive and the defiant. People begin to find Shelley—for all his melody—noisy and ill conditioned now because his Anarchs have vanished, yet there was a time when novel thought HAD to go ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... without stamina and without principle; one section thrust aside by Europe, and vegetating in filth with longing eyes directed towards the Messiah's ass or other member of the long-eared fraternity; the other occupied with fingering state securities and the pages of a cyclopaedia, and constantly oscillating between wealth and bankruptcy, oppression and tolerance. Their own science is dead among Jews, and the intellectual concerns of European nations do not appeal to them, because, faithless to themselves, they are strangers to abstract truth and ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... never refused an invitation to join in a service held so laudable by the profession, and filled his glass also. And so strong was the beverage, that not many minutes had elapsed when they found it extremely difficult to take a forward move without oscillating from the line. As, however, the brigade was made up of gentlemen, and not fighting soldiers, the general suddenly remembered that it would not do to keep them waiting; and, taking the major by the arm, they toddled (as if the floor were unsafe for such good ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... strengthened with her strength; until it became a deep and all-absorbing passion—the great reality of her spirit-life; for love such as hers, outstripping the bounds of time, links itself even with our hopes beyond the grave;—how, when he lay stretched upon the bed of suffering, oscillating between life and death, the bitter anguish that the thought of separation occasioned her, enlightened her as to the true nature of her feelings; how, as his recovery progressed, to watch over him, and minister to his comfort, was happiness beyond expression to her;—how, when ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... who had exchanged bows with little Molineux, seated himself in an armchair near the bookshelves. He looked at the card-players, listened to the conversations, and went to the doorway every now and then to watch the oscillating bouquet of flowers formed by the circling heads of the dancers in the moulinet. The expression of his face was that of a true philosopher. The men were dreadful,—all, that is, except du Tillet, who had ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... dogma; as amongst the modern Sikhs of Hindostan, who have blended the Brahminical and Mahometan creeds by an incoherent syncretismus; or, as amongst many heretics of Persia and Arabia, who are mere crazy freethinkers, without any religious determination, without any principle of libration for the oscillating mind. Whereas our differences, leaving generally all central truths untouched, arise like our political parties, and operate like them; they grow out of our sincerity, and they sustain our sincerity. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... prodigious meteor, hurled from the heavens. It had been loosened on the mountain crest a half mile above, and was plunging downward with inconceivable momentum. Striking some obstruction, it rebounded like a rubber ball against the opposite side of the gorge, then recoiled, still diving downward, oscillating like a pendulum from wall to wall, whirling with increasing speed until it crashed to the bottom of the gorge with a shock so terrific that the earth and ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... characterized most of the doings of his shipmates, and in following the bent of his own joyous nature, in the hours of solitude and in the dark night, when no one saw him, his mind ever reverted to the one engrossing subject, like the oscillating ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... are related of them. They had little regard for the external dignity of the court, but they strongly insisted on its discipline. Many of them sat with their feet on the desk, chewing tobacco, and whittling a stick. During a trial one of the counsel referred to his opponent as an "oscillating Tarquin." The judge roared ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... the spot. Their combined action may therefore be graphically represented by three systems of lines, the 'isodynamic, isoclinic', and 'isogonic' (or those of equal force, equal inclination, and equal declination). The distances apart, and the relative positions of these moving, oscillating, and advancing curves, do not always remain the same. The total deviation (variation or declination of the magnetic needle) has not at all changed, or, at any rate, not in any appreciable degree, during a whole century, at any particular point on the Earth's surface,* ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... which move him are never obvious and frequently unintelligible. But in the end he seems genuinely a man—a man of the sort we see about us in the real world—not a patent and automatic fellow, reacting docilely and according to a formula, but a bundle of complexities and contradictions, a creature oscillating between the light and the shadow—at bottom, for all his typical representation of a race and a civilization, a unique and inexplicable personality. More, he is a man of the first class, an Achilles of his world; and here the achievement of Dreiser ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... Oscillating Hydraulic Motor.—A small motor for household use, as for driving sewing machines and other domestic ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... the snake from her body and held it by the tail high above her. The hideous creature stretched up its head towards the roof of the cavern, which it was just able to reach. It then began to move its head backwards and forwards, with a slow, oscillating motion, as if looking for something At the same moment, the witch began to walk round and round the cavern, coming nearer to the centre every circuit; while the head of the snake described the same path over the roof that she did over the floor. for she held it up still. ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... well in the house—saw Mrs. Wolfstein's eager delight in it, Lady Manby's broad amusement, Robin Pierce's carefully-controlled indignation, Mr. Bry's sardonic and always cold gratification, Lady Cardington's surprised, half-tragic wonder—she was oscillating between two courses, one a course of reserve, of stern self-control and abnegation, the other a course of defiance, of reckless indulgence of the strong temper that dwelt within her, and that occasionally showed itself for a moment, as it had on the evening of ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... are nearly all from American models, and include the oscillating engines of the "Golden Gate," the last important advance in the construction of the marine engine; for, although the form of the oscillator has been known for years, it had never been applied to marine uses until the success of the "Golden Gate" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... had slanted down toward the bows at an angle of about 36 degrees. She was standing, so to speak, on her head. Our bow was fast upon the bottom of the sea—our stern was still oscillating up and down like a mighty pendulum. The manometer showed a depth of about ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... of the tide down to the next low water—this is a wave of the first order. In waves of the second order, the force raising them acts only on the surface, and there the effect is greatest (as in the wind waves)—where one assists in giving to the water oscillating motion which maintains the next, and gradually puts the whole surface in commotion; but at a short distance ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... balanced clauses of rhetoric will be sure to have something analogous. Our own heroic couplet is a case in point. So perhaps is the invention of rhyme which tends to confine the thought within the oscillating limits of a refrain, and that of the stanza, which shows the same process in a much higher stage ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... down. High up in the light sky hung the full moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp, unseen before, were now visible in the distance. And farther still, beyond those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless distance lured one to itself. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the twinkling stars in its faraway depths. "And all that is me, all that is within me, and it is all I!" thought Pierre. "And they caught all that and put it ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... was adding new courses of study. The cleverest operators were brought back to learn how to run more complicated machines. Turret lathe hands, oscillating grinders, inspectors were graduated. In short, by the end of March, Mary was able to report to another special meeting of the board of directors that where Spencer & Son had been 371 men short on the first of the year, every empty place was now taken and a waiting list ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... kinder take her mind off things she starts out to do," remarked Price. The rattle of the oscillating petticoats had distracted his own mind from a nice calculation as to the amount of a bill for a fractional amount of citron at a fractional increase in the market-price. The old clerk was about to send a cost slip with some goods to be ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... consists of language rapidly vibrating or oscillating between two persons. The object of any conversation is always accusative, e.g., "Mrs. Edwards has no taste in hats." Most conversations consist of an indeterminate number of sentences, but sometimes it is difficult to tell where one sentence ends and the next begins. It is even ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... understood that the purpose of this announcement was to get rid of me, I have no distinct remembrance whether it pleased or frightened me. My impression is, that I was in a state of confusion about it, and, oscillating between the two points, touched neither. Nor had I much time for the clearing of my thoughts, as Mr. Quinion was to go upon ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens |
