"Piston" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for development? The steam-engine is a machine of remarkable structure. It has had, in one sense of the term, a wonderful "evolution." It is based on certain principles, the foundation one of which is the expansibility of steam, and its ability, when confined in a cylinder, to give motion to a piston. The steam-engine was first used for pumping, then for turning machinery, then for propelling boats, and now its crowning department is seen in the locomotive. There is a plan, a likeness, a similarity, which runs through all steam-engines, whether they be found in the mine, ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... his speech 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, the butcher blaring away unmoved, with the fierce ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... single drivers in the center, 9 ft. in diameter, and a four-wheeled bogie at each end. The driving wheels have no flanges. The bogie wheels are 4 ft. in diameter. The cylinders have a diameter of 161/2 in. and a piston stroke of 24 in. The boiler contains 180 tubes, and the total weight of the engine is 42 tons. These locomotives, constructed for 7 ft. gauge, have attained a speed of seventy-seven miles ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... of 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 ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... of freight across the ocean. The engines of the locomotive and the ship are worked by the push of steam. A fire is built under a boiler. The water is boiled; the steam is shut in; the only way the steam can get out is by pushing the piston ahead of it; the piston is attached to machinery that makes the ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... practical point of view, much the same thing—an easily portable substance, which could be decomposed electrically by wind or water power, and which would then recombine and supply force, either in intermittent thrusts at a piston, or as an electric current, would be infinitely more convenient for all locomotive purposes than the cumbersome bunkers and boilers required by steam. The presumption is altogether in favour of the possibility of such substances. Their advent will be the beginning of the ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... bustle of the intellect. Most of the machinery of modern language is labour-saving machinery; and it saves mental labour very much more than it ought. Scientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable. Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know they are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk and think for themselves. It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... themselves 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 were renewed, and Countess ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... the helmet and sabre stood a piano open, and with a piece of music on the stand—a movement by Chopin; a violoncello leaned in its case in one corner, a cornet-a-piston showed itself, like an arrangement in brass macaroni packed in red velvet upon a side-table; and in front of it lay open a small, flat flute-case, wherein were the two halves of a silver-keyed instrument ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... 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 Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... the tools used were next shown us, and were 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 ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... constructed by Mr. E.D. Farcot for actuating a Cance dynamo-electric machine, consists of a cast iron bed frame, A, upon which are mounted all the parts. The two jacketed, cylinders, B and C, of different diameters, each contains a simple-acting piston. The two pistons are connected by one rod in common, which is fixed at its extremity to a cross-head, D, running in slides, E and F, and is connected with the connecting rod, G. The head of the latter is provided with a bearing of large diameter which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... 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 action and results ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... thirst, and drank it off at a draft. Almost instantly afterward 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 I felt dreadfully ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... galleries, fragile colonnades, gilded cornices, and resplendent frescoes—was throbbing throughout its whole perilous length with the pulse of high pressure and the strong monotonous beat of a powerful piston. Floods of foam pouring from the high paddle-boxes on either side and reuniting in the wake of the boat left behind a track of dazzling whiteness, over which trailed two dense black banners flung from its ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... appearance. Asano, pointing out the parts of this apparatus to him, told him that, like the gas-engine of Victorian days, it was of the explosive type, burning a small drop of a substance called "fomile" at each stroke. It consisted simply of reservoir and piston about the long fluted crank of the propeller shaft. So much ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... the moment Faith turns his back on Fact, and looks at Feeling, the procession wabbles. Steam is of main importance, not for sounding the whistle, but for moving the wheels; and if there is a lack of steam we shall not remedy it by attempting by our own effort to move the piston or blow the whistle, but by more water in the boiler, and more fire under it. Feed Faith with Facts, not with Feeling.—A. ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... Roebuck almost in despair, saying, "My old white-iron man is dead!" feeling his loss to be almost irreparable. His next cylinder was cast and bored at Carron, but it was so untrue that it proved next to useless. The piston could not be kept steam tight, notwithstanding the various expedients which were adopted of stuffing it with paper, cork, putty, pasteboard, and old hat. Even after Watt had removed to Birmingham, and he had the assistance of Boulton's best workmen, Smeaton ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... 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 ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... spoke, the professor came dashing toward the camp, his arms were outstretched as if in entreaty, and his long legs going up and down like piston rods, at ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... his head well back, chest forward, arms working piston-like, close down at his sides, while his long, regular tread was as light and springy as an Indian's. His jaw was set grimly, but it was manifest that he was still breathing deep and ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... the band of men, some twenty of them, cleaving their way through the crowd like a wedge. At their head, and taller than the others, fought two men, whose arms worked with the systematic precision of piston-rods, and before whom men fell on either hand as ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... 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, and left them— then I say, If his machine ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... strong roots are piercing deep, entwining themselves firmly among the stones, piercing the cold silent crevices of the earth. Ay, indeed! The coal in the furnace, burning passively and hotly, is as much a force, though it but lies and suffers, as the energy that throbs in the leaping piston-rod or the rushing wheel. Not in success and noise and triumph does the soul grow; when the body rejoices, when the mind is prodigal of seed, the spirit sits within in a darkened chamber, like a folded chrysalis, stiff as a corpse, in a faint ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... our drive to Krugersdorp we left for Cape Town and England. We made the voyage on the old Roslin Castle. Always a slow boat, she had on this occasion, in sporting parlance, a "wing down," having broken a piston-rod on her way out from England, when we had vainly awaited her at Cape Town, and I think it was nearly three weeks before we landed at Plymouth. Again Randolph's African journey was brought back ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... usually of a strong iron chest, with a hinged cover, into which the clay is placed, having a piston moving in it, connected by a rod or bar, having cog-teeth, with a cog-wheel, which is moved by horse or hand power, and drives the piston forward with steadiness, forcing the clay through the openings in the die-plate. The clay issues in continuous lines of pipe. The machines most ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... 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 of alternately raising ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... says the dissolving views in London put him up to the value of a dark exhibition. We also think we can manage a concert, which will he sure of a good attendance if we say it is for some parish charity. Jack has volunteered a solo on the cornet-a-piston: he has never tried the instrument, but he says he is sure he can play it, as it looks remarkably easy hanging up in the windows of the music-shops. He thinks one might drill the children and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 25, 1841 • Various
... in dimensions. The horse power would have to be as the seventh power of the speed, and our vessel would therefore have 20,000 (24 / 20)^{7}, or say 72,000 horse power. Further applications of Froude's laws of similitude will show that the steam pressure and piston speed would have to be raised 20 per cent., while the revolutions were discounted 20 per cent., supposing the engines and propellers to be increased in size to scale. To provide the requisite enormous boiler power, all geometrical scale would disappear; but it would carry us too far ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... engine as the Punjab comes sliding down, the round world to welcome its curled darling. It spurns with contemptuous piston the vulgar corn-growing provinces of Couper; it seeks the fields that are sown with dragon's teeth; it hisses forward with furious joy, like the flaming chariot of some Heaven-booked Prophet. Already Egerton anticipates ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... 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 than a steam ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... graphically. It would be very desirable that fresh experiments should be 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... never be set so hard as to cause friction. If there are set-screws at the side of the cotters, they should be tight, and all cotters should have a split-pin at the bottom for greater security. The cotters which fasten the piston-rods to the cross-heads should be firm in their place, as well as the set-screws, keys, or other connections, by which the feed-pump pistons are secured ...
— Practical Rules for the Management of a Locomotive Engine - in the Station, on the Road, and in cases of Accident • Charles Hutton Gregory
... was sufficient, and we also tested and 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 ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... like the piston of a pump. It vanished and reappeared and a plane came off. Men in vividly-colored suits swarmed about it, and the elevator was descending again. The plane roared, shot down the deck, and was gone to form one of the string of climbing ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... But 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, and ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... to the steam-hammer to see scraps of tough iron, the size of a crown-piece, welded into a huge piston, or other instrument requiring the utmost strength. At Wolverton the work is conducted under the supreme command of the Chief Hammerman, a huge-limbed, jolly, good-tempered Vulcan, with half a ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... which Symington immediately asked, "Why don't you use the steam-engine?" The model which Symington exhibited, produced rotary motion by the employment of ratchet-wheels. The rectilinear motion of the piston-rod was thus converted into rotary motion. Mr. Miller was pleased with the action of the ratchet-wheel contrivance, and gave Symington an order to make a pair of engines of that construction. They were to be used on a small pleasure-boat on ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... STEAM-ENGINE. A 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
... sense of what is due to the game and to his own dignity is then suddenly lost, and a strange sight is often seen. Five, six, and seven more follow in quick succession, the man's arms working like the piston of a locomotive, and his eyes by this time being quite blinded to the ball, the sand, the bunker, and everything else. As an interesting feature of what we might call golfing physiology, I seriously suggest that players ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... 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 rather hoarse ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... "time"—no matter what time is—is able to produce, by transformation or by drawing on other sources of energy, new energies unknown to nature. Thus the solar energy transformed into coal is, for instance, transformed into the energy of the drive of a piston, or the rotary energy in a steam engine, and so on. It is obvious that no amount of chemical energy in food can account for such an energy as the time-binding energy. There is only one supposition left, ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... answered Tom. "Even if I have to shove the piston rod myself," and at this remark both of his brothers ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... the water may be hot, very hot, hot enough to scald you, almost boiling; thirdly, it may be just one degree hotter and at the boiling point, giving forth its vapor in clouds of steam, pressing through the valves and driving the mighty piston which turns the wheels and propels the train of ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... much with his hands. The slender expressive fingers, forever active, forever striving to conceal themselves in his pockets or behind his back, came forth and became the piston rods of his ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... led, in the hour of emptiness and loss, to recognise whose hand it was that pulled up the props round which our poor tendrils clung. But the opposite actions have the same purpose, and like the up-and-down stroke of a piston, or the contrary motion of two cogged wheels that play into each other, are meant to impel us in one direction, even to the heart of God who is our home. A landowner stops up a private road one day in a year, in order to assert his right, and to remind the neighbourhood that he ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... gunpowder presses applies still more to those for gun-cotton, although the latter are always hydraulic presses. Generally the pistons fit the mould perfectly, that is to say, they make aspiration like the piston of a pump. But there is no metal as yet known which for any length of time will stand the constant friction of compression, and after some time the mould will be wider in that part where the greatest compression takes place. The best metal for this purpose has proved to ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... 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 James Watt's invention of a separate condenser ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... arms of Shasta appeared to be as tireless as the piston-rods of an engine, and at last our friends grow weary of watching him. The boys became drowsy, and they finally lay down in the bottom of the boat, with their blanket over them, and went ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... human being aimed such an unceasing, unending, rain of blows in the space of two minutes as had Trooper Matthewson. His arms had worked like the piston rods of an express engine—as fast and as untiringly. He had taken the Gorilla by surprise, had rushed him, and had never given him a fraction of time in which to attack. Beneath the rain of sledge-hammer blows the Gorilla had shrunk, guarding for dear life. Driven ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... simple illustration of the working of a steam engine is given in Figure 128. Steam under pressure enters through the opening F, passes through N, and presses upon the piston M. As a result M moves downward, and thereby induces rotation in ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... domestic implement or utensil found hanging on the walls of some kitchens was what was known as a sausage-gun. One here is shown with the piston detached, and also ready for use. The sausage-meat was forced out through the nozzle into the sausage-cases. A simpler form of sausage-stuffer has also been seen, much like a tube-and-piston garden-syringe; though I must add a suspicion which has always lingered in ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... high pressure 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, ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... ready to take off for a journey that in theory should last forever. It was daunting to think that before a space ship could be built and powered and equipped with machinery there had to be such wildly irrelevant plans worked out as a proper check of controls for the piston-engine ships that flew parts to the job. The details ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... said to the fireman, "We must oil our engine well." So they took oil cans with funny long noses and they oiled all the machinery, the piston-rods, the levers, the wheels, everything that moved or went round. And all the time ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... an instrument of that description in the house. I applied it to his mouth, drew up the piston, and then ejected the air, and re-applied it. In two minutes he pronounced himself better, and I left the old nurse hard at work, and my father very considerably pacified. I returned to my sister, to whom I recounted what had passed; but it was no source of mirth to us, although, had it happened ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... intimate a friend of Madame Carraud, the novelist was also a friend of M. Carraud, whom he called "Commandant Piston," and discussed his business plans with him before going to Corsica and Sardinia to investigate the silver mines. M. Carraud had a fine scientific mind; he approved of Balzac's scheme, and thought of going with him; ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... engine, 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 Atkinson engine made it seem ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile
... breathing seems to be mostly carried on in the tail. The tracheae are here collected in a large mass, sending their branches into folds of membrane lining the end of the alimentary canal, and which act like a piston to force out the water. The entrance to the canal is protected by three to five triangular horny valves (Fig. 128, 9, 10, 128 a, side view), which open and shut at will. When open, the water flows in, ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... Actual 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
... is provided with a steam cylinder, similar to the cylinder of a steam engine, containing a piston, the rod of which is attached to a crosshead, A, that slides on ways, B, secured to the ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... extension of muscle and bone; a wheel is a swifter foot, a derrick a greater hand. Consequently, in the early part of the century, the race found itself with a new gigantic body." It is as though the infection of the dancing, lunging, pumping piston-rods, walking beams, drills, has awakened out of Strawinsky a response and given him his power to beat out rhythm. The machine has always fascinated him. One of his first original compositions, written while he was yet a pupil ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... 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 in unbalanced engines, one mass ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... the soups containing them. Maccaroni, being tubular, is the favourite 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 ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... too small to be allowed to join in the field sports of the others, was playing at being a railway train. He had travelled in a train once, and now passed Hugh's door under easy steam, working his arms and legs like piston-rods, and giving piercing imitations ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... differently than before, since the law of gravity seemed no longer to be in force. One of the engineers was doing his work in a peculiarly twisted way, like a man asleep caught between the rim of the wheel and the piston-rod covered with verdigris. Frederick descended on his ghastly tour down to the stokers, whom the catastrophe had surprised in the midst of their occupation. Some were still holding their shovels in their hands, though unable to lift them. They themselves were ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... applied to many cylindrical objects, as to the drum round which the chain is wound in a crane, a capstan or a watch; to the cylinder studded with pins in a barrel-organ or musical-box; to the hollow shaft in which the piston of a pump works; or to the tube of a gun. The "barrel" of a horse is that part of the body lying between the shoulders and the quarters. For the system of vaulting in architecture ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... each fit was past, that that was the first time he had felt anything, and at this moment would declare in broad Scotch that he'd never been sick at all, qualifying the oath with "except for a minute now and then." He brought a cornet-a-piston to practice on, having had three weeks' instructions on that melodious instrument; and if you could hear the horrid sounds that come! especially at heavy rolls. When I hint he is not improving, there comes a confession: "I don't feel quite right yet, ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 one hundred ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... in his work, The Wheel of Wealth, the part which nature plays in productive machinery is not confined to the brains of the gifted inventors and their colleagues. It is incorporated in, and identified with, the actual machines themselves. The lever, the cam, the eccentric, the crank, the piston, the turbine, the boiler with the vapour imprisoned in it—devices which it has taxed the brains of the greatest men to elaborate and to co-ordinate—were all latent in nature before these men made them actual; and when once such devices are actualised it is nature ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... cannot, 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 to themselves, or which they feel to have been without ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... challenge to the authority of NorCon. Public demand for faster and more powerful vehicles had forced the automotive industry to put more and more power under the touch of the ever-growing millions of drivers crowding the continent's roads. Piston drive gave way to turbojet; turbojet was boosted by a modification of ram jet and air-cushion drive was added. In the last two years, the first of the nuclear reaction mass engines had hit the roads. Even as the hot Ferraris and Jags of the mid-'60s ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... each stroke; when the pressure in the reservoir diminishes the cut-off is delayed so that a larger quantity of air is admitted to the small cylinder; and when the pressure in the reservoir is so far reduced that the pressure on the smaller piston gives very little power, the supply passages are kept open so that the air acts directly on the piston of the larger cylinder. This arrangement is also available when the air pressure is high and great power is required ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... machinery, which is ordinarily too heavy to be run by hand or foot power. This necessary motive power was discovered in steam. The steam engine was devised by James Watt, an English inventor of great ingenuity. He invented a cylinder containing a piston, which could be forced back and forth by the introduction of steam. His progress was much retarded by the inability of the mechanics of his time to make an accurate cylinder of sufficient size, but in the year 1777 the new machine ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... progress in the science of this great force, until at the present time it is handled, controlled and understood in its phenomena almost as easily as water is poured into a vessel, air compressed under a piston, or hydrogen made to ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... 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 the surface. On it four men, tottering and exhausted, ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... reduced by using the air in a state of compression, and therefore of greater density, throughout its operation. Even then, however, the amount of operative heat is very small in comparison with that which passes through the steam-engine, per cubic foot swept through by the piston, for the change of state which water undergoes in its transformation into steam involves the taking in of much more heat than can be communicated to air in changing its temperature within such a range as is practicable. Another and not less serious objection is the practical ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... about the frantically fighting body, and at last Lee's 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 hard ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... Each man is a law to himself. Some drink whisky, and some drink brandipanee, and some drink cocktails—vara bad for the coats o' the stomach is a cocktail— and some drink sangaree, so I have been credibly informed; but one and all they sweat like the packing of piston-head on a fourrteen-days' voyage with the screw racing half her time. But, as I was saying, the population o' Larut was five all told of English—that is to say, Scotch—an' I'm Scotch, ye know,' ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... the fact that at the French Exposition of 1867 Mr. Porter installed two Porter-Allen engines to drive electric alternating-current generators for supplying current to primitive lighthouse apparatus. While the engines were not directly coupled to the dynamos, it was a curious fact that the piston speeds and number of revolutions were what is common to-day in isolated direct-coupled plants. In the dozen years following Mr. Porter built many engines with certain common characteristics—i.e., high piston ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... as I had been informed upon my first visit. Her health continued nearly in 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 was so minutely divided by ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... be 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 publisher, Schlesinger, to write for his Gazette Musicale to which he contributed ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... sufferer from fever, (or one stunned by some sudden and violent grief,) when certain sounds, words, or tunes, accidentally determined, thrill through the head with the steadiness and vehement action of the piston of a steam-engine—beat, beat, beat!—every note seeming to fall on the excited brain like the blow of a hammer; while, as the fever and pain increase, the more rapidly and heavily do those torturing notes pursue their furious chase. We well remember, under an attack of disorder in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... as above while the saddle is traveling back. Thus is insured an exactly 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
... are as numerous as spring flowers. "Christ liveth in me." "Know ye not that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" "Ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you." The Lord Jesus is in the heart which makes Him welcome, as the steam is in the piston, as the sap is in the branch, as the blood is in the heart, as the life is in the body. It would be impossible for words to describe a more intense spiritual Oneness than that which is here presented to us. The Saviour is in each of us, as the Father is in Him, and we are in Him, and He in God. ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... Nevertheless, what gave him his value to humanity, and hence his greatness, was the fact that his attention had been arrested by the sight of the lid of a saucepan of boiling water raised by the steam. "Steam is a force which could lift a piston as it lifts the cover of a saucepan, and become the motor power of a machine." Papin's famous saucepan is a kind of magic wand in the history of mankind, which thenceforth began to work and travel without fatigue. How wonderful are such stories of great discoveries arising from ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... evidently in a female hand— and the other holding her handkerchief, as if prepared for a scene. One leg was crossed over the other, and the foot of the one that was above worked in the air, up and down, with the force of a piston of a steam-engine, indicative of the propelling power within—when Rainscourt, whose voice was heard all the way upstairs, arrived at the landing-place, and, in answer to a question of one of ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... than six inches thick, it'll go this time," muttered Tom, as he gathered all his strength and sent out his fist like the thrust of a piston rod. ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... not without some little damage which precluded another flight that day, it was a very simple thing after all. If the craft was thrown from its balance in any way, the movement of this pendulum would cause two little valves to open. This would make the compression from the engine force a piston back and forth, which communicated with the warping levers and automatically accomplished what had up to that time, Bud went on to say, been done by the hand of the busy aviator. Thus a mechanical balancer had been arranged, so that the pilot need never bother himself as to whether a stiff ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... had been to Normandy one summer as a boy with his 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 ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... now 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 ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... 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 almost threadlike ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... adjusted the delicate 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
... aid; 255 Bade round the youth explosive STEAM aspire In gathering clouds, and wing'd the wave with fire; Bade with cold streams the quick expansion stop, And sunk the immense of vapour to a drop.— Press'd by the ponderous air the Piston falls 260 Resistless, sliding through it's iron walls; Quick moves the balanced beam, of giant-birth, Wields his large limbs, and nodding ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... his lines on hinges, rolling Right and left like very doom, Till our fate nigh past controlling Brake in glory out of gloom. While upon those awful stages Throbbed a world's great piston beat, And the moments seemed as ages Rung from death and red defeat. Ah, we lived, indeed, and no man Recked of wound or any ill, As we grimly faced the foeman— If we died, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... elevating vessels, is decidedly ridiculous, although less laborious than the former. It is called the "hydraulic power," and consists in forcing water into large cylinders, by forcing pumps which are operated by steam power; while the water thus forced into the cylinder moves a piston and piston-rod, to which is connected several stout chains, which passing over corresponding pulleys, descend to a platform, on which rests the vessel to be raised. An expensive apparatus, called the "Marine Railway," constructed on the principle of the inclined plane, with a huge ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... 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. So (mutatis mutandis) with modification. There is no reason therefore ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... has been experimentally determined at 40-50 cubic meters per minute at 15 lb. pressure. This will be supplied by a single cylinder engine of 900 millimeters blast, and 786 millimeters steam piston, diameter 786 millimeters, stroke making fifty revolutions per minute, which is also to work a Root blower and the accumulator pumps. Having regard to these very different demands upon the power of the engine, it will ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... Air Force favored integration, some were disturbed by the prospect of competition with whites of equivalent rank that would naturally follow. Many of the black officers were overage in grade, their proficiency geared to the F-51, a wartime piston plane, and they were the logical victims of any reduction in force that might occur in this period of reduced military budgets.[16-9] Some men doubted that the new program, as they imperfectly understood it, would truly integrate the service. They could, for example, see no ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... 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 scuppers, tearing ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... placed before—when we bear in mind all this, is it 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 the steam acts ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... known it is an unalterable quantity, like gravitation. But he can accomplish the same thing indirectly by weakening the power of the rival force. Thus, if he encloses a portion of gas in a cylinder and drives a piston down against it, he is virtually aiding cohesion by forcing the molecules closer together, so that the hold of cohesion, acting through a less distance, is stronger. What he accomplishes here is not all gain, however, for the bounding molecules, thus jammed together, come in ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... to give the proper amount of lead, and the desired release and compression, and the expansion valve is operated by a separate eccentric fastened in line with or 180 deg. ahead of the crank. When the piston, therefore, commences to move from the crank end to open the port, D, the expansion valve is forced by its eccentric in the opposite direction, and is closing the steam port and would have closed it before the piston reached quarter stroke, thus allowing the steam then in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... but not for worlds would Constans have remained alone in that echoing, wind-swept cavern, surrounded by these monstrous shapes of metal. Lever and piston, wheel and shaft, the familiar outlines had disappeared, and in their stead a vast, indefinable bulk loomed through the dusk. It hung in the background like a wild beast, eternally watchful and waiting, waiting. Of a sudden, Constans felt horribly afraid. Stumbling and panting he ran ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... 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: rod stays in boilers were broken off, but nuts were fastened ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... was opened before his amazed eyes. The Saracen Young Woman and the rest all went to the wall; and when on April 7, 1842, he set out for Dresden he had different plans altogether in his head. Before he could start Schlesinger advanced the money for more cornet-a-piston arrangements of opera-airs, and he had to take the scores of ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... properly to rest upon every second syllable throughout the whole line. A little variety must, he admits, be allowed to avoid satiety; but all lines which do not go in the steady jog-trot of alternate beats as regularly as the piston of a steam engine, are more or less defective. This simple-minded system naturally makes wild work with the poetry of the 'mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies.' Milton's harsh cadences are indeed excused on the odd ground that he who was 'vindicating the ways ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Monroe, and busily 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
... cylinder, the bottom closed while the top remains open, and pour in water to the height of a few inches. Next cover the water with a flat plate or piston, which fits the interior of the cylinder perfectly; then apply heat to the water, and we shall witness the following phenomena. After the lapse of some minutes the water will begin to boil, and the steam accumulating at the upper ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... a cloudless sky, a tranquil sea. The piston- rods of the engines so regularly coming up from below, to look (as well they may) at the bright weather, and so regularly almost knocking their iron heads against the cross beam of the skylight, and never doing it! Another ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... his eye fell upon the garden-syringe with which Athelstane sometimes cleaned the motor-bicycle. It had been left, with a bucket of water, outside the shed. He drew out the piston, filled the syringe, then discharged its contents straight at the dog. But at that most unlucky moment a quick change took place on the wall; the collie retired in favor of his master, and the stream of water charged full ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... he can ship a new boiler. The ol' fool 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 just ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... handles of jugs and tea-pots are made and united with the body of the 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
... 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 little model worked well enough; it had a one-inch bore ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... feeling and sentiment control conduct and character. Modern machinery has thrown light upon the problems of the soul. The engineer finds that his locomotive will not run itself, but waits for the steam to pound upon the piston. The great ships also are becalmed until the trade winds come to beat upon the sails. Informed by these physical facts, we now see a noble thought or ambition or social ideal is a mechanism that will not work itself, but asks the enthusiastic heart to lend power divine. ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... instant death, and he always crossed the road to avoid it; but this afternoon he went down the cinder pathway so close that he could touch it with his stick. It was incredible that so terrible a thing could dwindle in a few years to the dimensions of a motor piston. The crank that moved up and down like a bending, gigantic knee looked almost ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... had no such handicaps. His great body crashed straight through all obstacles. The fearful padding of those monstrous feet came nearer and nearer. Bert's legs worked like piston rods, but to no avail. The distance between them steadily decreased, and now he could hear the labored breathing of his enraged pursuer close on his heels. It was like a hideous nightmare, and gradually the conviction began to force itself upon him that he was running his last race. ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... our illustration was built in New 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 attains a speed of nine miles per hour, thus fully demonstrating ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... the shadow of the Red Hand tips. From beyond the tips came the beat of a horse's hoofs, and the sound of human voices. Dick's first thought was of his pursuers, the troopers; his second of his escape; his third sent the blood surging through his veins and his heart beating like a piston. A grand thought, a magnificent thought! He could have cried out with exultation as it swept into his mind. Creeping around the tree he silently unearthed the gold-stealers' bag and dragged it after him, retreating ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... the use of twin screws at a later time. He also devised and adapted many new types of engines for marine purposes, having respect to the geometrical character of the connections by means of which a reciprocating motion of the piston may be transformed into a rotary motion of the shaft. In particular, he was the first to introduce and show the advantages of engines directly connected to the propeller-shaft, instead of through the more indirect and clumsy modes which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... part tried to move it would be interfered with by the others, and the whole thing would buckle up and be checked. Liberty for the several parts would consist in the best possible assembling and adjustment of them all, would it not? If you want the great piston of the engine to run with absolute freedom, give it absolutely perfect alignment and adjustment with the other parts of the machine, so that it is free, not because it is let alone or isolated, but because it has been associated most ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... led them to another machine which cut round gold pieces out of the rolled out "Zain." He showed the girl how every clipper, how every screw beneath the impulsion of the piston did its proper share of the work, and how the whole process was set going by steam power from without and could therefore be directed and controlled by one man with another man ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... in steam engine construction. If a cylinder has a piston in it with an area of 100 square inches, and a pipe one inch square supplies steam at 50 pounds pressure, the piston will have 50 pounds pressure on every square inch of its surface, equal to ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... the white skin to perfection, but what impressed me most as I watched the piston-like action of the Captain's affair, was to see how the fleshy lips of her Fanny clung to it each time it withdrew. I could hear quite an audible sucking sound, and those lips gradually deepened in colour from their original fleshy tint, till ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... 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 that we have eyes to settle which work is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... slowly 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 forced ourselves to stay ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... of 1794 mentions a piston engine, in the cylinder of which, coal tar, spirit, or turpentine was vaporised, the gases being ignited by a light burning outside the cylinder. The piston in this engine was thrown upwards, this in turn forcing a pump piston down which did work in raising water. This was the first real gas ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... 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
... that the cornet-a-piston was a beautiful instrument for pic-nics, races, boating-parties, and other long-vacation amusements, and sedulously practised "In my cottage near a wood," "Away with melancholy," and other airs of a lively character, in a doleful and distracted way, that would have fully justified his ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... privileged to descend into the very vitals of your charger and sit throughout the midnight watch, an awed listener to the throbs of the mighty heart that vitalizes his every function, while each vigorously thrusting piston, each smug, palm-rubbing eccentric, each somnolently nodding lever, drives deeper into your lay brain an overwhelming sense of pride in such of your kind as have had the genius to conceive, and such others ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... during the experiments; and further evidence is found in the fact that the engines he ordered of Messrs. Boulton and Watt for the "Clermont" were precisely of the same dimensions as those in the "Charlotte Dundas," with the exception of two inches more diameter in the piston; and the patent of Fulton dates from 1809—twenty years after Symington had propelled a boat by steam on Lake Dalswinton, and eight years after he had himself taken sketches of Symington's engines in the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... docile horse answers a touch on the rein. He opened the throttle-valve just a little, so that but little steam was admitted to the cylinders, and the pistons being pushed out slowly, the driving-wheels revolved slowly and the train started gradually. When the end of the piston stroke was reached the used steam was expelled into the smokestack, creating a draught which in turn strengthened the heat of the fire. With each revolution of the driving-wheels, each cylinder—there is one on each side of every locomotive—blew ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... 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 ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... a 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 being ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... rounded and alike. There were two rudders at each end, one on each hull, alongside the race. The eight paddle blades, each 14-1/2 feet by 3 feet, turned in either direction by stopping the engine piston at half-stroke and reversing the flow of steam. Rigged with two lateen sails and two jibs, the ship sailed either end first. The engine of 120 hp was in one hull and two boilers were in the other. Other sources, ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle |
