"Piston" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... principle on which it was constructed. It was supported on three wheels, and carried a small copper boiler, heated by a spirit lamp, with a flue passing obliquely through it. The cylinder, of 3/4 inch diameter and 2-inch stroke, was fixed in the top of the boiler, the piston-rod being connected with the vibratory beam attached to the connecting-rod which worked the crank of the driving-wheel. This little engine worked by the expansive force of steam only, which was discharged into the atmosphere after it had done its work ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... it continued to be so employed long after the more powerful and economical condensing engine of Watt had been invented. In the Newcomen or "fire engine," as it was called, the power is produced by the pressure of the atmosphere forcing down the piston in the cylinder, on a vacuum being produced within it by condensation of the contained steam by means of cold water injection. The piston-rod is attached to one end of a lever, whilst the pump-rod ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... ourselves, had not been hungry when we arrived, but simply lifeless with fatigue. They were different animals now, and the better ones among them stepped out with tightly curled tails and uplifted heads, their iron legs treading the snow with piston-like regularity and their black muzzles every now and then sniffing the welcome scent ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... the same state for two or three years more, but she always found herself better if she left her own house for any length of time. At length it occurred to me, that though the pump was a wooden one, the piston might work in lead. I therefore ordered the pump rods to be drawn up, and upon examination with a magnifying glass, found the leather of the piston covered with an infinite number of very minute shining particles of lead. Perhaps in this instance the metal ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... minds can follow the manufacture in all its detail and picture it to ourselves. If we feel that we can identify ourselves with the steam and machinery of a steam engine, so as to travel in imagination with the steam through all the pipes and valves, if we can see the movement of each part of the piston, connecting rod, &c., so as to be mentally one with both the steam and the mechanism throughout their whole action and construction, then we say we understand the steam engine, and the idea of God never crosses our ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... machinery, and that Yukon country is a long ways from where that machinery is made, and every nut and bolt in it will be worth its weight in coin by the time they've got it in there. All we got to do is to cop off a piston and a valve or two and this army man will be willin' to pay several hundred dollars to get 'em back rather than wait for months to get 'em in ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... gas-jets were flaring in the room, diffusing dim rays in the midst of the tobacco-smoke. The waiters, after serving the coffee and the brandy, had removed the last piles of dirty plates. Down below, beneath the three acacias, dancing had commenced, a cornet-a-piston and two fiddles playing very loud, and mingling in the warm night air with the ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... drag took the young men to London; his lordship driving, and the servants sitting inside. Jack sat behind with the two grooms, and tooted on a cornet-a-piston in the most melancholy manner. He partook of no refreshment on the road. His silence at his clubs was remarked: smoking, billiards, military duties, and this and that, roused him a little, and presently Jack was alive again. But then came the season, Lady Clara Pulleyn's first season ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fiercely; and the next moment he was down on his knees, rapidly examining the connections, valve, piston, and rod. "Yah!" he roared, savagely. "The ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined arm-chair with a ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... during the time it takes it to traverse the remaining few inches to the muzzle, a certain portion of the enclosed gas is forced through this hole, where it is "trapped," in a small "gas-chamber" and its force directed against a piston or lever which, being connected with the necessary working parts of the gun by cams, links or ratchets, performs the functions of removing and ejecting the empty cartridge case, withdrawing a new cartridge from the belt, clip or magazine, and "cocking" the gun: that is, forcing the "hammer" ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... stood in moonlight. Then, for involuntarily he now did everything running, with a dash up the steps he seized the sullen pendant bell-handle, and worked it pumpwise, till he perceived a smaller bell-knob beside the door, at which he worked piston-wise. Pump and piston, the hurly-burly and the tinkler created an alarm to scare cat and mouse and Cardinal spider, all that run or weave in desolate houses, with the good result of a certain degree of heat to his frame. He ceased, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... stamp themselves upon his consciousness as the signet on soft wax;—a single pressure is enough. Let me strengthen the image a little. Did you ever happen to see that most soft-spoken and velvet-handed steam-engine at the Mint? The smooth piston slides backward and forward as a lady might slip her delicate finger in and out of a ring. The engine lays one of its fingers calmly, but firmly, upon a bit of metal; it is a coin now, and will remember that touch, and tell a new race about it, when the date upon it is crusted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... of a long series of communications to that learned body, and gained for its author the Telford premium and medal. In it he contended that a perfect engine would be one in which all the heat applied to the steam was used up in its expansion behind a working piston, leaving none to be sent into a condenser or the atmosphere, and that the best results in any actual engine would be attained by carrying expansion to the furthest possible limit, or, in practice, by the application of a regenerator. Anxious to realise his theories further, he constructed ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... the action of one man upon the piston of a very small hydraulic press. The guns are mounted upon hydraulic carriages. The brake that limits the recoil consists of two bronze pump chambers, a and b (Fig. 10). The former of these is 4 inches in diameter, and its piston is connected with the gun, while the other is 8 inches in diameter, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... of its power. The steam is generated in the boilers, but while it remains there it remains quiescent and inert. The action in which its mighty power is expended, and by means of which all subsequent effects are produced, is the lifting and bringing down of the enormous piston which plays within the cylinder. This piston is a massive metallic disc or plate, fitting the interior of the cylinder by its edges, and rising or falling by the expansive force of the steam, as it is admitted alternatively above ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... very remarkable. An open shed with a couple of small mud forges were the chief objects visible. The bellows consisted of two bamboo cylinders, with pistons worked by hand. They move very easily, having a loose stuffing of feathers thickly set round the piston so as to act as a valve, and produce a regular blast. Both cylinders communicate with the same nozzle, one piston rising while the other falls. An oblong piece of iron on the ground was the anvil, and a small vice was fixed on the projecting root of a tree ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Loando. I have learned that wretched hole well enough since. And it was as we were running out of Loando, that, in reversing the engine too suddenly, lest we should smash up an old Portuguese woman's bum-boat, that the slides or supports of the piston-rod just shot out of the grooves they run in on the top, came cleverly down on the outside of the carriage, gave that odious g-r-r-r, which I can hear now, and then, dump,—down came the whole ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... born at Dartmouth; invented a steam-engine in which the piston was raised by steam and driven down by the atmosphere after the injection into the cylinder of a squirt of cold water, which cooled it, so that the steam when injected did not raise the piston at once up. By ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... warm spoon and a warm syringe, as in the case related in a former chapter, it must be admitted that the corona is not without some functional office in the act of procreation. Its shape indicates a valve action like that of the valve in a syringe-piston, and if we examine the two extremes of these conditions of glans—one devoid of corona, as many are, and the other with the corona in its most pronounced form, when in a state of erection—the difference, either in the appearance of the two organs or in the different philosophical ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori. The cella contained one central and ten side niches, in which eleven masterpieces of Greek chisels were placed, namely, the Apollo and Hera, by Baton; Leto nursing Apollo and Artemis, by Euphranor; Asklepios and Hygieia, by Nikeratos; Ares and Hermes, by Piston; and Zeus, Athena, and Demeter, by Sthennis. The name of the sculptor of the Concordia in the apse is not known. Pliny speaks also of a picture by Theodoros, representing Cassandra; of four elephants, cut in obsidian, a miracle of skill and labor, and of a collection ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... rising, until a breeze caught and carried them away. The sight alone would suffice to inspire terror, without the oppressive smoke and the uncanny noise far down in the depths. Dull and regular, it sounded like the piston of an engine or a great drum, heard through the noises of a factory. Presently there was silence, and then, without any warning, came a tearing crack, the thunder as of 100 heavy guns, a metallic din, and a cloud of smoke rose; and while we ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... the greater draught obtained by the contraction of the blast-pipe was not counterbalanced in some degree by the negative pressure upon the piston. Hence a series of experiments was made with pipes of different diameters, and their efficiency was tested by the amount of vacuum that was produced in the smoke-box. The degree of rarefaction was determined by a glass tube fixed to the bottom of ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... modern world is menaced by materialism. "With very rare exceptions," cries Maitre, a French Catholic, "the most undisguised materialism has everywhere replaced the lessons and recollections of the spiritual life. The shrill voice of machinery, the grinding of the saw or the monotonous clank of the piston, is heard now, where once were heard chants and prayers and confessions. Once the monk freely undid the door to let the stranger in, and now we see a sign, 'no admittance,' lest a greedy rival purloin the tricks of trade." Montalembert, referring to the ruin of the ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... except in these lengthened terms, give you the complete force of the passage; especially of the [Greek: apiston emesato piston]—"made it trustworthy by passionate desire that it should be so"—which exactly describes the temper of religious persons at the present day, who are kindly and sincere, in clinging to the forms of faith which either have long been precious ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... enters the cylinder from the boiler, varying in degrees of heat from 300 to 500. After acting on the piston head, it is exhausted directly into the chamber or hollow bed-plate through which the pipes pass. The water, when it enters the heater, is as cold as when it left the tank, but the steam which surrounds the pipes has ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... patented in 1887, was one of the attempts to solve this as well as several other problems, thus creating a more efficient cycle. This engine was designed so that the exhaust stroke carried the piston all the way to the head of the engine, while the compression stroke only moved the piston far enough to sufficiently compress the mixture. The unusual linkage necessary to create these unequal strokes in ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile
... could not understand what the young ensign said to them, they knew the drift of his jeering words. Their faces contorted with rage, they struck at him, Dave's arms working like piston rods in his efforts to ward off ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... hurling weight, broke down Rainey's guard and left the arm numb. The next instant they were at close quarters, swinging madly, rife with the one desire to down the other, to maim, to kill. A blow crashed home on Rainey's cheek, sending him back dazed, striking madly, clinching to stop the piston-like smashes of the hunter clutching him, trying to trip him, hammering at the fierce face above him as they both went down and rolled into the ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... believe it?—between twelve and one in the morning I woke up with my head full o' figgers. Not another wink o' sleep could I get, neither. Soon as ever I shook up the bolster an' settled down for another try, I see'd myself whiskin' back and forth over this here piece o' water like a piston-rod in a steamship, and off I started countin' for dear life. Count? I tell you it lasted for nights, and by the end o' the week I had to see the doctor about it. I was losin' flesh. Doctor, he gave me a bottle o' trade—very flat-tasted ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... resemble very much a lady's hat-pin. When the gun is to be used, a piece of cotton is wound around the end of an arrow and the other end or point inserted first in the barrel, the cotton acting as a piston by means of which the air forces ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... fitting for sea. Her own guns had been put in perfect working order, and shone like silver, one bearing the name of Worden, the other that of Ericsson. Her engineer, Mr. Campbell, was in the act of giving some final touches to the machinery, when his leg was caught between the piston-rod and frame of one of the oscillating engines, with such force as to bend the rod, which was an inch and a quarter in diameter and about eight inches long, and break its cast-iron frame, five-eighths ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... habitat of a very dangerous insect, which is rendered peculiarly ferocious by being boiled. The government of the island, therefore, never allows a stick of it to be exported without being accompanied by a piston with which its cavity may at any time be thoroughly swept out. These are commonly lost or stolen before the maccaroni arrives among us. It, therefore, always contains many of these insects, which, however, generally die of old age in the shops, ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... cast-brass, with a piston made of two circular pieces of the same metal, each put into a strong leather cup, and bolted to the other. The bottoms of the cups being together, when the piston becomes loose in the barrels, and there is not sufficient time to replace the cups by new ones, they ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. She is 42 ft. keel and 7 ft. beam, and has 4 ft. depth of hold. She has an improved Clarke compound engine, also shown in an accompanying illustration, with a high pressure piston four inches in diameter, and a low pressure piston eight inches in diameter, the stroke being six inches, and the engine driving two twenty-six inch screws. With 130 pounds of steam, and making 275 revolutions per minute, the launch ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... line of the History was written, so Miss Anthony, with vol. III. and bushels of manuscripts, fled to the peaceful home of her sister Mary at Rochester. The expected party sailed from Liverpool the 26th of May, on the America After being out three days the piston rod broke and they were obliged to return. My son-in-law, W.H. Blatch, was so seasick and disgusted that he remained in England, and took a fresh start two months later, and had a swift passage without any accidents. The rest were transferred to the Germanic, and reached New York the 12th of ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... pop-gun, some ten feet in diameter, charged with mephitic vapours and plugged with microbes of typhoid fever. Conceive your sensations when you were aware that the piston was ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... The piston is of cast-steel, and the rod is of iron, 12 inches in diameter. The waste steam is carried out of the mill by a pipe, and, before being allowed to escape into the atmosphere, is directed into an expansion pipe which it penetrates from bottom to top. Here a portion of the water condenses ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... the Earth into an elastic body, which we can put into compression by resting the weight upon it. In this way work is done against elastic force and stored as elastic potential energy. We may deal with a metal spring, or with a mass of gas contained in a cylinder fitted with a piston upon which the weight may be placed. In either case we find the effect of compression is to raise the temperature of the substance, thus ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... the condenser rumbles, the steam from the funnel roars furiously forth, spreading its scalding vapour through the air. Again, the man, almost imperceptibly touches the iron rod with his finger, the magic monster again moves its piston downward, the wheels make a turn, the massive vessel surges upon her lines, as if eager to press forward on her course. Another gentle touch, and, obeying the summons, the motive power is still; the man subjects the monster with his little finger. He has stopped her near the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Point a la Croix; but the short delay during the storm occasioned faster work. More voyageurs were engaged from the Nipissangue tribes. As soon as one lot fagged fresh shifts came to the relief. Paddles shot out at the rate of modern piston rods, and the waters whirled back like wave-wash in the wake of a clipper. Except for briefest stoppages, speed was not relaxed across the whole northern end of those inland seas called the Great Lakes. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... E, and the piston, F, in combination with the lever, D, or their equivalent, operated by the means and in the manner ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... condensing machine, in which the downward stroke of the piston is performed by the pressure of the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... to the accents of transoceanic celebrities and Eleanor Roosevelt. There they competed on alternate forums with literate gardeners and stuttering horticultural amateurs. Stolon, rhizome and culm became words replacing crankshaft and piston in the popular vocabulary; the puerile reports Gootes fabricated under my name as the man responsible for the phenomenon were syndicated in newspapers from coast to coast, and a query as to rates was received ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... is wrong with an academic drawing, and what is the difference between it and fa fine drawing. But perhaps this difference can be brought home a little more clearly if you will pardon a rather fanciful simile. I am told that if you construct a perfectly fitted engine—the piston fitting the cylinder with absolute accuracy and the axles their sockets with no space between, &c.—it will not work, but be a lifeless mass of iron. There must be enough play between the vital parts to allow of some ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... in introducing the drug by means of a hypodermic syringe into the substance of the gluteal muscles. The syringe is made of glass, and has a solid glass piston; the needle of platino-iridium should be 5 cm. long and of a larger calibre than the ordinary hypodermic needle. The preparation usually employed consists of: metallic mercury or calomel 1 dram, lanolin and olive oil each 2 drams; it must be warmed to allow of its passage through the ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... vessel in the same way. Small handles, beadings, mouldings, &c. are formed by means of an iron cylinder, having its bottom perforated so as to mould the clay, as it passes through, into the required figure. A piston is inserted into the top of the cylinder, and caused to descend slowly by means of a screw, in consequence of which the clay is continually passing out through the perforation, and is cut off ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... the piston of the cylinder first to be cleaned to the top of the compression stroke and continue this from cylinder to ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... "lost." This was objectionable because the charging of the chute anew resulted in "washing" the cement more or less out of the concrete until the chute was again filled. To reduce this objection the contractor was directed to dump some neat cement into the tube before filling with concrete. A canvass piston was devised which could be pushed ahead of the concrete when filling the chute. It consisted of two truncated cones of canvass, one flaring downward to force the water ahead, and the other flaring upward to hold the concrete. The canvass was stiffened and held ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... effort at pugilism was almost ridiculous. His arms appeared to go round like windmills beating the air. It really seemed as though he had rushed upon the point of Sir Timothy's knuckles, which had suddenly shot out like the piston of an engine. The carter lay on his back for a moment. Then he ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not unequal work. The work must be unequal if the conditions are unequal. It's not the same machine. To turn a woman on to a man's work is like trying to run an express train by clock-work, with a pendulum for a piston, ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... & Co., and now I'm senior partner with the firm of Stephenson & Mackenzie. If ever you're up in Greenock direction, and want to see how we do it, just ask for Donal Mackenzie, and they'll show you the place. (Proudly.) We're the sole makers of the Mackenzie piston, if ever you heard ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... complex network of steel. He turned one thrust, turned another, turned another. Then suddenly he went forward at the lunge with his whole living weight. Turnbull leaped back, but Evan lunged and lunged and lunged again like a devilish piston rod or battering ram. And high above all the sound of the struggle there broke into the silent evening a bellowing human voice, nasal, raucous, at the highest pitch of pain. "Help! Help! Police! Murder! Murder!" The gag was broken; and the tongue of ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... that train yesterday morning broke a piston rod and had to stop down the lake shore. I hopped off and hid on the far bank, watching the island. If you folks hadn't come over this way to fish this morning, I'd been across before the ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... been proved that, even when the heat generated by compression is allowed to escape, some gases remain uncondensible by any force we can produce. An unsuccessful attempt lately made in Vienna to liquify oxygen, clearly shows this enormous resistance. The steel piston employed was literally shortened by the pressure used; and yet the gas remained unliquified! If, then, the expansive force is thus immense when the heat evolved is dissipated, what must it be when that heat is in great ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... most serious typical damage was done by breaking the cylinders, valve-chests, circulating pumps, steam and exhaust units in main engines; dry-firing boilers, and thus melting the tubes and distorting furnaces, together with easily detectable instances of a minor character, such as cutting piston and connecting rods and stays with hack saws, smashing engine-room telegraph systems, and removing and destroying parts which the Germans believed could not be duplicated. Then there was sabotage well concealed: ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... The larger specimens had a case to themselves, and tickets with writing on them in a character which I could not understand. There were fragments of steam engines, all broken and rusted; among them I saw a cylinder and piston, a broken fly-wheel, and part of a crank, which was laid on the ground by their side. Again, there was a very old carriage whose wheels in spite of rust and decay, I could see, had been designed originally for iron rails. Indeed, ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... converts many from an opinion they had begun to promulgate, that the steamer on the Mediterranean afforded, on the whole, the most eligible mode of traversing space. We looked at each other piteously enough, on seeing that we were fast going to face a magnificent specimen of a wave, of which our piston was determined to try the valour, and if possible abate the confidence. When Greek meets Greek, said we, as we dashed through it, and gave a warning to old Neptune to take care of his interests below! Other huge parcels of water hit us obliquely, or come down upon us with a swoop ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... of spent steam is accomplished by means of slots, I, sawed into the fronts of the cylinders at about 1/8 in. above the lowest position of the piston's top at the end of the stroke, at which position of the piston the valve rod drops into the cutout portion of the cam and allows ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... Horse-power of an engine, multiply the area of the cylinder in square inches by the average effective pressure in pounds per square inch, less 3 lb. per square inch as the frictional allowance, and also by the speed of the piston in feet per minute, dividing the product by 33,000, and the quotient will ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... improved the ignition. At four o'clock the wind dropped, and in an hour the engine was started. While moving along, the idle cylinder was ejecting oil, and this, together with the fact that it had no compression, made me hope that broken piston-rings were the source of the trouble. It would only take two hours to remove three cylinders, take one ring from each of the two sound ones for the faulty one, and all might ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... to the catholicity of this loss. Imagine the French Revolution, the Lutheran Reformation, the "Catholic" Reaction, and the like, to be revolutions of the vast human engine. Consider then the loss of power. Consider the impulse, the enormous impulse, applied to the piston, and then look at the result. What losses in leakages, in cooled enthusiasms, in friction-heat, in (pardon the ludicrous analogy) waste gases! Think, too, of the loss involved in unbalanced minds, as ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... this cylinder, under a pressure of 5 atmospheres, is capable of lifting a weight of 100 tons. The hammer, which is fixed to this piston by a rod, has therefore an ascensional force of 88,000 pounds. It can be raised 16 feet above the anvil, and this gives it a power three and a third times greater than that of the Prussian hammer. Large guns can therefore be made in France just ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... went on praying and praying forever and ever. When they came to the end of the three hymns, they began again by themselves. The mill kept getting louder, they kept the time with their feet, and it was like the stroke of a mighty piston, a boom! Fris nodded with them, and a long tuft of hair flapped in his face; he fell into an ecstasy, and could not sit still upon ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... down the upper Bay. She was a quaint, crablike little craft. Her tall and skinny smokestack was like a perpetual exclamation point. Her gait resembled that of a sprightly old horse who makes a great to-do with his feet on the road but somehow gets nowhere. At the end of each stroke of her piston she seemed to stop for an instant and then with a wheeze and a clank from below, and a violent tremor from stem to stern, started all over. Her paddle-wheels kicked up alarming looking rollers behind, but with it all she travelled no faster ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... called a clack. The child should now be permitted to plunge the piston (by which name it should now be called) into a tub of water; in drawing it backwards and forwards, he will perceive that the clack, which should now be called the valve, opens and shuts as the piston is drawn backwards and forwards. It will be better not to inform the child how this mechanism is employed in the pump. If the names sucker and piston, clack and valve, are fixed in his memory, it will be sufficient for his first lesson. At another opportunity, he should be present when ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... mental male organism specially adapted for the superincumbent posture of energetic human copulation and energetic piston and cylinder movement necessary for the complete satisfaction of a constant but not acute concupiscence resident in a bodily and mental female organism, passive but ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... principal food of all is small insects. I have examined scores of them, and never without finding insects in their crops. Their generally long bills have been spoken of by some naturalists as tubes into which they suck the honey by a piston-like movement of the tongue; but suction in the usual way would be just as effective; and I am satisfied that this is not the primary use of the tongue, nor of the mechanism which enables it to be exerted to a great length beyond the end of the bill. The tongue, for one-half of its length, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... possible not to connect the facts together, and to refer cycles of living generations to the same unalterableness in the action of like matter under like circumstances which makes Jupiter and Saturn revolve round the sun, or the piston of a steam-engine move up and down as long as ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... carried through the job. That gave me a chance to study the new engine at first hand and in 1887 I built one on the Otto four-cycle model just to see if I understood the principles. "Four cycle" means that the piston traverses the cylinder four times to get one power impulse. The first stroke draws in the gas, the second compresses it, the third is the explosion or power stroke, while the fourth stroke exhausts the waste gas. The ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... for every pound of their weight; while, to keep the frames thin, the necessary power is obtained by terrific speed of the moving parts, as though a steam engine, to avoid great pressure in its cylinders, had a long stroke and ran at great piston speed, which, however, is no disadvantage to the rotary motion of the electric motor, there being no reciprocating cranks, etc., that must be started and stopped ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... Almost from the very beginning of his researches in this direction, he adopted the Woolf system, which is one that permits of great variation in the expansion, and one in which the steam under full pressure acts only upon the small piston. There are many types of this engine in use, all of which present marked defects. In one of them, the large cylinder is arranged directly over the small one so as to have but a single rod for the two ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... a shock. Ursula sat playing on her piano till very late; and went to bed easier in mind and very sleepy. About midnight she was awakened by the music of a band composed of a clarinet, hautboy, flute, cornet a piston, trombone, bassoon, flageolet, and triangle. All the neighbours were at their windows. The poor girl, already frightened at seeing the people in the street, received a dreadful shock as she heard the coarse, rough voice of a man proclaiming in ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... the fluid can pass freely from one cylinder to the other, through the connecting pipe. Suppose a horizontal section of the smaller cylinder to measure one square inch, that of the larger to be one hundred square inches. A weight of one pound on the smaller piston will balance a weight of one hundred pounds on the larger. If a downward pressure of one pound be exerted on the smaller piston, the larger piston will exert an upward pressure of one hundred pounds. Conversely, a downward pressure of ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... was inaudible to Mahony. Just behind him stood one of his brother-in-law's most arrant opponents, a butcher by trade, and directly John began to hold forth this man produced a cornet-a-piston and started to blow it. In vain did Mahony expostulate: he seemed to have got into a very wasps'-nest of hostility; for the player's friends took up the cudgels and baited him in a language he would have been sorry to imitate, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... press and a set of enormous dies. These dies are grooved to fit each other, and shut together; and the plate of iron which is to be corrugated being placed between them, is pressed into the requisite form, with all the force of the hydraulic piston—the greatest force, altogether, that is ever employed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... head jerked round as he flew, and he shot a stabbing, sheathed glance at the great sea-bird, as a king might at a man in a crowd who begins to fumble at his hip-pocket. But, save for that, he took no further notice, and beat on with his terrific, piston-like, regular wing-beats; and the gull, that speckless, dazzling, hardened, hard giant, laughed—laughed, I say, softly and to himself, hoarsely and insolently: "How-how-how-how!" It was as if he laughed ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... of conflict between what you want to do—what you know is right—and what those three-cell-brained nincompoops made you think you ought to do that you have got no more degrees of freedom than a piston-rod. You haven't been yourself for a minute since you came ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... length of four-inch iron piping, which I found in the boat-store, and which had probably belonged to some vessel as the barrel of a pump, or something of the kind. To this I fitted a long wooden piston, having a wooden disk on the end, through which I cut a circular hole, and fitted over it a leathern valve. When I pushed this piston down into the water the valve would open and the water would enter the barrel, and when I drew the piston up the valve would close and draw ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... despised Stanhope so utterly that he would take no protection from him, or give him any share in his own troubles. But at that blow, a demon sprang to life in him which knew no law but an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. His left arm shot out like a piston at the dim flushed face before him, and the face bobbed downward ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... to tell what is superior and what is subordinate work. I suppose that in a steam engine the smallest rivet is quite as essential as the huge piston, and that if the rivet drops out the piston-rod is very likely to stop rising and falling. So it is a very vulgar way of talking to speak about A.'s work being large and B.'s work being small, or to assume ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... outputs of the same principle that animates the old order. To account every co-ordination of modern social life as an instance of civilization is as if any one should cite the turbine engine and its achievements and set these down to the credit of the piston engine. But the idea of the one is wholly new and not a further evolution of the old. Or it is as if one should assign the glory of the motor-car to the inventor of the bicycle, or of the bicycle to the originator of the horse-cart; or as if one should point to an aeroplane as ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... throat relaxed. A second, a third, and a fourth blow, his arm traveling swiftly in and out, like a piston-rod, and the triumph in DeBar's eyes was replaced by a look of agony. The fingers at his throat loosened still more, and with a sudden movement Philip freed himself and sprang back a step to gather force ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... father and mother, and the smell carried him back to days before those in which he had begun to bruise himself against the great outside world. "I always think one of the best parts of going abroad is the first thud of the piston, and the first gurgling of the water when the paddle begins ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... gaps that poverty and misfortune opened in the ranks were filled up immediately. As soon as the sun rose the factory chimney began to smoke, the hammer broke the stone, the file bit the metal, the plough furrowed the earth, the ovens were lighted, the pump worked its piston, the hatchet sounded in the wood, the locomotive moved amidst clouds of vapour, the cranes groaned on the wharves, the steamers cut the waters, and the little barks danced on the waves dragging their nets. None were absent from work's ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... at rest while engaged on this work he earned his daily bread by arranging popular operas for cornet-a-piston. He submitted to this deep humiliation for he was conscious of the prize to be obtained by "serving." A partial compensation in thus working for hire he found in the permission given him by the sympathetic music ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... permission from Dick, easily and quickly thrust the needle through the stretched skin, with steady hand sank the piston home, and with the ball of the finger soothingly ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... pump operated by mercury. The mercury acts virtually as the piston, and the actuating force is the weight of the column of mercury, which must exceed thirty inches in height. There are many types. Mercurial air pumps are largely used for exhausting incandescent lamp chambers. (See ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... ingenious machine, in very small portions, to the bottom of an upright cylinder, which is immediately shut perfectly close. A flint and steel are at the same time made to strike directly over it, and to ignite the powder. The air that is thus generated, forces up a piston through a cylinder, which piston, striking the arm of a wheel, puts it in motion, and with it the machinery of the mills. A complete revolution of the wheel again prepares the cylinder for a fresh supply of gunpowder, which is set on ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... prehistoric navvy, who had become a watchman, and was responsible for red lanterns hooked to posts on the edge of chasms to warn carts off. He was going to sleep in half a tent, soothed or otherwise by the unflagging piston of that donkey-engine, which had made up its mind to ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Gravitation, weight, the majestic influence that holds the stable pyramid upon its base through centuries of time, condescending to turn the restless wheels of man's machinery! When the expansive burst of the vapour confined within the cylinder of the condensing steam-engine thrusts upwards the piston-rod with its mighty beams, it is simple weight—the weight of the superincumbent transparent atmosphere—that crushes the metal back with antagonistic force. When particles of water have been sublimated into the air by the heating power of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... to a large roller underneath the bed, a tympan frame and frisket arranged to open and close automatically with the movement of the bed, and an inking apparatus, consisting of an ink-box with a narrow slit in the bottom through which the ink was forced by a piston upon a roller below, from which it was transmitted by two intermediate rollers to another and lower roller which inked the form as it passed underneath. The two intermediate rollers had an alternating, lateral motion which spread or distributed ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... engine the steam, after having pushed the piston to the end of the stroke, escapes into the atmosphere, and the impelling force is therefore that due to the difference between the pressure of the steam and the pressure of the atmosphere. In the condensing engine the steam, after having pressed the piston ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... But, instead of being operated by steam, it was a chemical machine; Smith's trained eyes told him that the cylinder was really an enormous retort. And he noted with further perplexity that the prodigious piston-rod not only moved with terrific speed, but in a strictly back-and-forth motion; its ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... consider the possibilities of one boiler operating the different kinds of machinery referred to. In Fig. 48 is shown a small pump, made by The Goulds Manufacturing Co., capable of lifting forty-eight gallons of water per minute against a head of a hundred feet. The diameter of piston is four inches and the length of stroke is six inches. It is operated by a belt from a steam engine used for other purposes ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... equable amount of cut on the whole three rests. When the lever, D, is not in use, the catch is removed from the wheel, B, and is allowed to rest against the pins, G or A, provided for that purpose. For piston rods, or for work such as cutting jack screws, this lathe is very useful. It is obviously, ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... I started back from the wagon lines, carrying a piston rod of the buffer, with Downey assisting me. We were on horseback and getting into Labazell Valley, when a shell passed over our head so close that we felt the wind of it; it was accompanied by a great flare over to our right. The shell struck one of our ammunition dumps containing about 50,000 ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... a journey comes a time when one tiredly shrinks from the work of speech, when observation dozes, and thought lolls like a limp sail that only idly stirs at the passing zephyrs; the legs like piston-rods strike on; when the pleasure is like that almost of dull narcotics; one realises only dimly that one is moving. At such times as these, coming from one knows not whence, and one feels too weak to search back to discover, there flit across the mind strange ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... don't know a thing about the job himself an' there's four men down there, without a foreman, soldierin' on him an' soakin' him a dollar an' a half an hour overtime. He's in so deep now he might as well jump into bankruptcy entirely an' put in a set o' piston rings, repack the pumps an' the stuffin-box, shim up the bearin's an' do a lot of little things the old Maggie's ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... the electrodes, there exists another action due to the agitation of the granules as the chamber is caused to vibrate by the sound waves. In other words, in addition to the ordinary action, which may be termed the piston action between the electrodes, it is claimed that the general shaking-up effect of the granules when the chamber vibrates produces an added effect. Certain it is, however, that transmitters of this general type are very efficient ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... of human ingenuity—Mr. Buchanan says so," squealed the high-pressure cylinder. "This is simply ridiculous." The piston went up savagely and choked, for half the steam behind it was mixed with dirty water. "Help! Oiler! Fitter! Stoker! Help! I'm choking," it gasped. "Never in the history of maritime invention has such a calamity overtaken one so young and strong. And if ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... right hand went its sure way to the thick, bared, pulsing throat. Trevors's right arm was caught at his side, held there by the body upon his. His left hand beat at Lee's face, struck and battered again only to come back like a steam-driven piston to hammer again. But Bud Lee's pain-racked body clung on, his thumb and fingers sank and sank deeper into the corded muscles of the heaving throat, crooked like talons, white and ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... passing under triumphal arches, to the clang of church bells and the blare of bands. On the leading engine rode the young Marquis of Blandford playing "See the Conquering Here Comes" on the cornet-a-piston, Mr. George Owen, Mr. Davies and Mr. Webb. Earl Vane was in the train and received a public welcome at the station. Then the inevitable speeches. The return train was still longer and took two hours to reach Machynlleth, where the jubilations ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... seeks some other part of his magic equipment. The servant comes in, reads off the formula, and immediately becomes an emperor of the elemental spirits. He gives them a horrible time. He summons and dismisses them alternately with the rapidity of a piston-rod working at high speed; he keeps them flying between the doctor's house and their own more unmentionable residences till they faint with rage and fatigue. There is all the best of the Middle Ages ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... day. It is this rotation which is the source of the energy. Let us compare the rotation of the earth with the rotation of the fly-wheel belonging to a steam-engine. The rotation of the fly-wheel is really a reservoir, into which the engine pours energy at each stroke of the piston. The various machines in the mill worked by the engine merely draw upon the store of energy accumulated in the fly-wheel. The earth may be likened to a gigantic fly-wheel detached from the engine, though still connected with the machines in the mill. From its stupendous dimensions ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... the bell in the engine-room tinkled softly once, and then rang savagely again and again to "hoist away." The great wheel turned fast and faster; the piston-rods flew in and out; the iron ropes hummed as they cut the air; and the people at the shaft's mouth waited, breathless with suspense, to see what the blackness would yield up to them. The carriage rose swiftly to ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... ants from an anthill, but yelling to out-vie the carters. The tiny car-line seemed to exist only to give opportunity for the perpetual clanging of the gong; and the toy wharf railway expended as much steam on its whistle as on its piston-power. ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... joint of bamboo is inserted into each, which serve as nozzles, pointing to, and meeting at, the fire. To produce a stream of air bunches of feathers or other soft substance, being fastened to long handles, are worked up and down in the upright tubes, like the piston of a pump. These, when pushed downwards, force the air through the small horizontal tubes, and, by raising and sinking each alternately, a continual current or blast is kept up; for which purpose a boy is usually placed on a high seat or stand. I cannot retrain ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... it off at a draught. Almost instantly afterwards, I was seized with a fit of giddiness, and felt more completely intoxicated than ever. The room whirled round and round furiously; the old soldier seemed to be regularly bobbing up and down before me like the piston of a steam-engine. I was half deafened by a violent singing in my ears; a feeling of utter bewilderment, helplessness, idiocy, overcame me. I rose from my chair, holding on by the table to keep my balance; and stammered out that ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... compressed air controlled by the engineman. By a single pull of a small brass lever within easy reach he can instantly apply every brake on his train with such force as to bring it to a standstill inside of a few seconds. The two small cylinders connected by a piston-rod on the right hand side of every locomotive just in front of the cab form the air-pump. It is always at work while a train is standing still, forcing air through lengths of rubber hose between the cars and into the reservoirs located beneath each one. As ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... more slowly on the cloth And sweaty fingers slacken And hair falls in damp wisps over the eyes— Sped by some power within, Sadie quivers like a rod... A thin black piston flying, One with ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... This ring of many segments, is called a commutator, because it commutates, or changes, the direction of the electric impulses, and delivers them all in one direction. In effect, it is like the connecting rod of a steam engine that straightens out the back-and-forth motion of the piston in the steam cylinder and delivers the motion to a wheel ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... valve passes below the bottom lip of the groove, the steam is cut off from the space between it and the main valve, which is fitted with packing rings and works over a latticed port. This port opens directly into the cylinder. The exhaust takes place chiefly through a port uncovered when the piston is approaching the end of its stroke. The remaining vapor left in the cylinder is exhausted under the lower edge of the main valve, until cushioning commences, and the steam from both upper and lower ports is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... described as the piston of an ocean greyhound making twenty-seven knots," said the man, taking no notice of the answer, and speaking in awestruck tones. "Do you know, one paper describes Johnson as the best piece of fighting machinery the world has ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... so tied by divine law that he can nowise modify his work: shall God not modify his? Law is but mode of life-action. Is it of his perfection that he should have no scope, no freedom? Is he but the prisoned steam in the engine, pushing, escaping, stopped—his way ordered by valve and piston? or is he an indwelling, willing, ordering power? Law is the slave of Life. Is not a man's soul, as it dwells in his body, a dim-shadowing type of God in and throughout his universe? If you say, he has made things to go, set them going, ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... amatyure like yourself. That's one style of play, yours is the other, and I like it best. But I began when I was a boy, you see, before my taste was formed. When you're my age you'll play that thing like a cornet-a-piston. Give us that air again; how does it go?' and he affected to endeavour ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... that he would, and she at once sat down before the little instrument. It was scarcely more to be compared with the magnificent machines of our day than the flageolets of Virgil's shepherds with the cornet-a-piston of the modern star performer, but Mozart, Haydn, Handel, or Beethoven never lived to see a better. It was only about two feet across by four and a half in width, with a small square sounding board at the end. ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... water is heated, the water which is turned into steam, the piston on which the steam acts, the driving wheel, &c., &c., are all one as much as another a means whereby a train is made to go from one place to another; it is impossible to say that any one of them is the main means. ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler |
