"Propulsion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... less than two decades old, and successful dirigible propulsion antedates it by a very short period, the mass of experiment and accomplishment renders any one-volume history of the subject a matter of selection. In addition to the restrictions imposed by space limits, the material for compilation is fragmentary, and, in many cases, scattered ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... America, that the world is indebted to Robert Fulton for the practical application of steam to the purposes of navigation. Whatever has been claimed for or by others in regard to the priority of the invention or application of the mighty power of steam to the propulsion of vessels, Fulton was "the first to apply it with any degree of practical success," as an English work states it. As one who labored for years over the idea which came from his own brain, though it also came to others, who wellnigh sacrificed his own life in its improvement, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... idiosyncrasy of design that escaped us both until she was about ready to launch—there was no method of propulsion. Her sides were far too high to permit the use of sweeps, and when Perry suggested that we pole her, I remonstrated on the grounds that it would be a most undignified and awkward manner of sweeping down upon the foe, even if we could find or wield poles that ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... as it was called, didn't advertise what sort of thing it was developing—but everybody knew that Lyman Dane was an expert on reactive propulsion of rocket motors. He could tell you—and frequently would without being asked—exactly what mass ratio, nozzle diameter and propulsive velocity would be needed for the first trip to the Moon. He knew how many hours a round trip would take, ...
— This is Klon Calling • Walt Sheldon
... a deposit of valuable platinum in Siberia, Tom started for that lonely place, and, to reach a certain part of if, he had to invent a new machine, called an air glider. It was an aeroplane without means of propulsion save the wind. ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... twenty-five feet in length, twenty-six feet broad at the water-line, and five and one-third feet deep to the structural deck. The strength and safety of the hull are increased by five water-tight compartments. Propulsion is effected by a pair of modern stern paddle-wheel engines capable of being worked up to over two hundred and fifty horse power, giving her a speed of ten miles an hour. She has stateroom accommodation for twenty-two ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... the horrors of starvation. I positively dreaded to think of what might be the effect of this upon the women; therefore, that we might not lie there absolutely helpless, I started to scull the boat with the steering oar. But she was heavy for this style of propulsion, and I estimated that our progress did not amount to more than three-quarters ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... the deserter, but he applied himself heartily to the propulsion of aunt Ermine, informing Rose that Mr. Clare was no end of a man, much better than if he could see, and aunt Rachel was ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... care where it lifts or sets down, since its method of propulsion isn't trying to work against the fabric of space itself. For that reason, an interstellar vessel is normally built in space and stays there, using ion rockets for loading and unloading its passengers. It's cheaper ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the age of 67. A long and eminently useful although unobtrusive life entitles his memory to respect. He commenced his career as a mechanic in the steam engine establishment of James P. Allaire, soon after the application of steam for the propulsion of boats and long before its application to ships for the purposes of commerce or war. For fifty-two years, with the exception of one or two brief intervals, he was connected with the Allaire works in this city, and for ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... thirst for equality in friendship to exercise their hearts. Narrow natures expand by persecuting as much as others through beneficence; they prove their power over their fellows by cruel tyranny as others do by loving kindness; they simply go the way their temperaments drive them. Add to this the propulsion of self-interest and you may read the enigma of most ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... lady's mind, though it was not accurately worded. I saw that I stood marked to be the scape goat of the day, and humbly continued to deserve well, notwithstanding. By dint of simple signs and nods of affirmative, and a constant propulsion of my friend's arm, I drew him into the boat, and thence projected him up to the level with his wife, who had perhaps deigned to understand that it was best to avoid the arresting of his divergent mind by any remark during the passage, and remained silent. No sooner ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The final propulsion was to come from an entirely different quarter. In November, 1847, the Reverend Mr. Gorham was presented by the Lord Chancellor to the living of Bramford Speke in the diocese of Exeter. The Bishop, Dr. Phillpotts, was a High Churchman, and he had reason to believe that Mr. Gorham held evangelical ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... censures in conversation. A man should nurse his opinions in privacy and self-fondness for a long time, and seek for sympathy and love, not for detection or censure. Dismiss, my dear fellow, your theory of Collision of Ideas, and take up that of Mutual Propulsion. I wish to write more, and state to you a lucrative job, which would, I think, be eminently serviceable to your own mind, and which you would have every opportunity of doing here. I now express a serious wish that you would come and ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... with an activity scarcely inferior. If there is anything worth while in accepted theories of the conversion and conservation of force these gigantic energies are by no means wasted; they appear as heat, light and electricity, modifying climate, reducing gas bills and assisting in propulsion of street cars. Even in baying the moon and insulting visitors and bypassers the dog releases a certain amount of vibratory force which through various mutations of its wave-length, may do its part in cooking a steak or gratifying the olfactory nerve ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... William Siemens of braking the train by converting the motor into a dynamo and thus utilizing the energy of momentum, he believed that the economy in fuel alone was sufficient to prove that the application of power by electricity was preferable to direct steam propulsion for the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... too much on an uncertainty; it would involve the risk of wandering too far from the center of things. He suddenly decided to double on his tracks and swing down to Chicago. Just why he felt as he did he could not fathom. But the feeling was there. It was an instinctive propulsion, a "hunch." These hunches were to him, working in the dark as he was compelled to, very much what whiskers are to a cat. They could not be called an infallible guide. But they at least kept him from ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... the air method of propulsion did away with the necessity of a large propellor such as most airships have to use, a propellor which must of necessity be very light and which is ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... inadequate as the methods and ideas of the practical movers, who were to a man left stranded in every country in Europe, during the period of his poetic activity. A transitional and unstable movement of society inevitably fails to supply a propulsion powerful enough to make its poetic expression eternal. There is no better proof of the enormous force of Byron's genius than that it was able to produce so fine an expression of elements so intrinsically unfavourable to high poetry as doubt, denial, antagonism, and weariness. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... organization. Gee-Gee Gould was electronics chief for all three projects. Dick Earle was electronics chief for Pegasus, under Gould, and there were also electronics chiefs for Orion and Cetus. Similarly, the projects had air-frame departments, propulsion departments, instrumentation departments, and ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... skipper, lieutenant. You'd better make sure, though, that as soon as the bomb-off signal is flashed, your engineer hits his auxiliary rocket-propulsion button. We want to be about fifteen miles from where ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... old bus in its way, but too slow; it's a 'pusher', you see, and 'tractors' are all the go. We're having some over to-day—tophole machines." Here ensued much technical discussion between him and N. as to the relative merits of traction and propulsion. ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... off the propulsion beams, seized two ray pistols that lay on the chart table, and ducked down the ladder. His companions were standing before the inner door of the air-lock in their bulging space suits, awaiting his order to leave the tender. He ...
— The Space Rover • Edwin K. Sloat
... horse are not less peculiar than its limbs. The living engine, like all others, must be well stoked if it is to do its work; and the horse, if it is to make good its wear and tear, and to exert the enormous amount of force required for its propulsion, must be well and rapidly fed. To this end, good cutting instruments and powerful and lasting crushers are needful. Accordingly, the twelve cutting teeth of a horse are close-set and concentrated in the fore-part of its mouth, like so many adzes or chisels. The ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the sparkle of the water, the gay lines of bunting flickering from stem to stern of the Committee Ship, the invigorating blare of the Troy Town Band, now throwing its soul into "Champagne Charlie," the propulsion of the oars that seemed to snatch her and sweep her forward past wondering faces to high destiny— all these were wings, and lifted her spirit with them. She began to under stand what it must feel like to be a Queen, or (at ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... time-consuming. Even with the suit's servomotors and propulsion units, motion across the ice, against the buffeting wind, was a cumbersome business. But Massan continued to work his way across the iceberg, fighting down a gnawing, growing fear that Odal was not there ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... flames, propeller arcs, engine noise, or other plausible or visible means of propulsion were noted. The color was silver, resembling an aluminum-painted fabric, and did not appear as ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... finally he may be able to use his legs perfectly if suspended (Gray). There are various types which have been called the paralytic, the choreic, and the saltatory. A tendency to go backward or retropulsion has been observed, according to Gray, as has also a tendency to go forward or propulsion. A curious phenomenon in this disease is that the patient can use the legs perfectly well lying in bed. The prognosis seems ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... An ungovernable desire of venereal indulgence. The remote cause is probably the stimulus of the semen; whence the phallus becomes distended with blood by the arterial propulsion of it being more strongly excited than the correspondent venous absorption. At the same time a new sense is produced in the other termination of the urethra; which, like itching, requires some exterior friction to facilitate the removal of the cause of the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... military affairs the projectile came more and more into favor, and is now held in high esteem by the most courageous. Its capital defect is that it requires personal attendance at the point of propulsion. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... inducted, was all that could have been desired for the scion of a noble house, whose pampered whims and vices were to be ministered to by the lavish hand of a fond parent, and where the display of mental abilities was no more necessary than in the propulsion of the mechanism of one of Her Majesty's establishments erected for the ambulating exercises of petty delinquents, yet to a young and high-spirited nature, such as John Ferguson's, the very absence of any intellectual requirements in the performance ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... upon the proceeds, and kept a cheerful spirit till the last soldo was spent, inventing one thing after another, and giving much time and money to a new principle of steam propulsion, which, as applied without steam to a small boat on the canal before his door, failed to work, though it had no logical excuse for its delinquency. He tried to get other pupils, but he got none, and he began to dream of going to America. He ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... claim to fame arises from his endeavours to introduce steam-power as an agent in the propulsion of ships at sea. Mr. Clerk of Eldin had already invented the system of "breaking the line" in naval engagements—a system that was first practised with complete success by Lord Rodney in his engagement off Martinico in 1780. The subject interested Mr. Miller ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... as he sees these dazzling rockets rise, with golden trails, into the social darkness of the Western skies, "they are really the upper classes here. Their power of propulsion to the zenith is inherent in themselves. If they mingle, in time, with the aristocratic noblesse of Europe, they may infuse a certain picturesque element." Hardin realizes that some of the children of these millionnaires of a day will play at school with young princes, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... style of canoe propulsion was forced on them. They came to a long stretch of smooth, deep, very swift water, almost a rapid-one of the kind that is a joy when you are coming down stream. It differed from the last in having shores that were not alder-hidden, but open gravel ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... He was neither enterprising nor inquisitive; he kept close to the rim of her skirt, which was as high as he could see, and he wished to be taken up and carried again. He was in a half-stupor; it was his desire to remain in that condition, and his propulsion was almost wholly subconscious, though ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... to this observation; he seemed to be thinking of something. After a moment he said, 'If you'll come and see us in town she'll show you the vase.' And as they passed into the drawing-room he gave the artist a friendly propulsion. 'Go and speak to her; there ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... halt. Ste. Marie looked over the guard-rail and saw that the driver had left his place and was kneeling in the dust beside the car peering at its underworks. The conductor strolled round to him after a moment and stood indifferently by, remarking upon the strange vicissitudes to which electrical propulsion is subject. The driver, without looking up, called his colleague a number of the most surprising and, it is to be hoped, unwarranted names, and suddenly began to burrow under the tram, wriggling his way after the manner of a serpent until nothing could be seen ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... where an opening in the courtyard wall overlooked a steep, rocky descent which was for some distance without vegetation. Here the two men grappled. There was some hard squeezing, some quick bending either way, a final powerful forcing forward of the arms on the part of Blaise, a last violent propulsion of the same arms, and Barbemouche was thrown backward down the precipice. Blaise stood for a time looking oven. We heard a series of dull concussions, a sound of the flight of detached ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... 'have their bones obliquely placed, so as to constitute, one with the other, so many obtuse angles, to the end, that by forming powerful levers, and affording every advantage for action to the muscles attached to them, they may be fitted for the purpose of propulsion of the ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... Engineers. Their machinery trains and elevates, loads and controls the heavy guns. The use of the Whitehead torpedo and all its appliances would be an impossibility without the Engineers. In addition to this there is the propulsion of the ship, and the control and supervision of a large staff of artificers and men. And yet the Engineer officers are the lowest paid class of commissioned officers in the Royal Navy—this when, without exaggeration, they may be ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... skin, having well-wrought metal buckles. Their paddles were not of wood. Not one trace of wood, in fact, was anywhere to be seen. Light metal blades, well-shaped and riveted to iron handles, served for propulsion. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... for the brutal Saxon with any degree of authority, but ventured to say that to the best of my knowledge and belief the supposititious reverend gentleman, when next he took his walks abroad, might possibly become acquainted with a novel but vigorous method of propulsion, or even might undergo the process so familiar to Tim Healy, not altogether unconnected with ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... nation of the world, China relied upon navigation by junks, which crept slowly against the current when urged by strong winds, and lay idle or were towed or poled by men when calms or head-breezes prevailed. Of steam applied to propulsion, she had no knowledge, until steamboats of foreign construction appeared in her waters and roused the wonder of the oblique-eyed natives by their mysterious powers. The first steamboat to ascend a Chinese river created a greater sensation than did the Clermont ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... enables him to urge himself forward. So long as skates consisted of the rounded bones of animals, the skater had to use a pointed staff to propel himself. In creating bite, the skater again unconsciously appeals to the peculiar physical properties of ice. The pressure required for the propulsion of the skater is spread all along the length of the groove he has cut in the ice, and obliquely downwards. The skate will not slip away laterally, for the horizontal component of the pressure is not enough to melt the ice. He thus gets ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... small, even for me, and I can hardly imagine that it could have floated with a full-sized man. There was one thwart set as low as possible, a kind of stretcher in the bows, and a double paddle for propulsion. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "People never move unless they are pushed." And when you have got them to move ever so little, then propel; but by no means expect that a movement on their part means progression. Without propulsion nothing results. Adela saw what Cornelia meant to do. It was not to fly to Sir Twickenham, but to dismiss Mr. Barrett. Arabella consented to write to Edward Buxley, but would not speak of old days, and barely alluded to a misunderstanding; though if she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... alter the size and shape of the parts which they surround. Their purpose, as a rule, is to move, or control the movement of, materials within cavities and tubes, and they do this by means of the pressure which they exert. Examples of their action have already been studied in the propulsion of the food through the alimentary canal and in the regulation of the flow of blood through the arteries (pages 159 and 49). While they do not contract so quickly, nor with such great force as the striated muscles, their work is more closely related ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... at the fore part of the upper deck, but the term is now applied to that part without the ship before the forecastle, or knee of the head, which is fastened to the stem and is supported by the main knee. Latterly, to meet steam propulsion, the whole of this is enlarged, strengthened, and armed with iron plates, and thus the armed stem revives the ancient strategy in sea-fights. Shakspeare makes Ariel thus allude to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... put her weight on his hands. Fifth, he may stand too far away from the side of the horse, in which case he is liable to throw her over to the off side of the horse (as happened once to me), by giving her an oblique instead of a vertical propulsion. A minor form of this mistake is attempting to put the lady on the saddle, instead of raising her to the height at which she can easily take her seat. After a lady has suffered from clumsy attempts to put her up, it is not to be wondered ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... and will have noticed, how the little animal wins its way up against the stream, by alternate pulses of active and passive motion, now resisting the current, and now yielding to it in order to gather strength and a momentary fulcrum for a further propulsion. This is no unapt emblem of the mind's self-experience in the act of thinking. There are evidently two powers at work, which relatively to each other are active and passive; and this is not possible without an intermediate faculty, which is at once both active and ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sometimes adhere to the ice, and as the mass glides slowly along at the rate of a few inches, or at the utmost 2 or 3 feet per day, abrade, groove, and polish the rock, and the larger blocks are reciprocally grooved and polished by the rock on their lower sides. As the forces both of pressure and propulsion are enormous, the sand acting like emery polishes the surface; the pebbles, like coarse gravers, scratch and furrow it; and the large stones scoop out grooves in it. Lastly, projecting eminences of rock, called "roches moutonnees," are smoothed and worn ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... river; but every now and then we came on barges, laden with hay or other country produce, or carrying bricks, lime, timber, and the like, and these were going on their way without any means of propulsion visible to me—just a man at the tiller, with often a friend or two laughing and talking with him. Dick, seeing on one occasion this day, that I was looking rather hard on one of these, said: "That is one of our force-barges; it is quite as easy to work vehicles ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... he was to ride was about sixty-five feet in diameter and approximately three times that in length. The propulsion was, the builders and engineers acknowledged, not the ultimate by any means. They were still constantly experimenting and hoping for much swifter travel. ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... balloon," returned the boy. "That's a clumsy way of traveling, at best. I shall go by electric propulsion." ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... masses of timber—not yet firmly lashed together—lay loose and loggish upon the water, and moved very slowly and irregularly under such ill-assorted propulsion: and, notwithstanding that the raft had obtained a hundred yards the start of the swimmers, its occupants began ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... thick, tapering to a point at each end. The driver sits on top of this plane upon a seat constructed over the small, noiseless radium engine which propels it. The medium of buoyancy is contained within the thin metal walls of the body and consists of the eighth Barsoomian ray, or ray of propulsion, as it may be termed in view ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... highways, and do away with the horse as a means of transportation, is being made in this city. It is quite probable that within a short time one may be able to see an ordinary carriage in almost every respect, running along the streets or climbing country hills without visible means of propulsion. The carriage is being built by J. F. Duryea, the designer and B. F. Markham, who have been at work on it for over a year. The vehicle was designed by C. E. Duryea, a bicycle manufacturer of Peoria, Ill., and he communicated his scheme ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile
... merchandise. The early traders were content to carry their supplies back and forth in canoes. As settlement and business increased, the canoe gave place to the raft, and the raft yielded to the flatboat. In the course of time, steam was applied to the propulsion of boats, and the flatboat yielded to the inevitable: the palatial steamboat was supreme. But the days of the steamboat were numbered when the civil war cast its blight over the land; and when the years of strife were over, so also was the river traffic which had ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... witnessed; our misgivings are as to the cost. The railway is the invention of the well known hydraulic engineer, Monsieur Girard, who, as early as 1852, endeavored to replace the ordinary steam traction on railways by hydraulic propulsion, and in 1854 sought to diminish the resistance to the movement of the wagons by removing the wheels, and causing them to slide on broad rails. In order to test the invention, Mons. Girard demanded, and at the end of 1869 obtained, a concession ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... anywhere. Now and then a log fallen into the water compels the voyager to get out and lift his boat over; then a shallow rapid must be dragged over; and when the stream is clear of obstruction, it is too narrow for any mode of propulsion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... to a vertical one. He glanced up at the quiet stars, at the same time emptying his lungs of air. With swift, vigorous propulsion of hands and feet, he lifted his shoulders and half his chest out of water. This was to gain impetus for the descent. Then he let himself go and sank without movement, a white statue, into the sea. He breathed in the water deeply, deliberately, after the ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... standing, firm at the post of duty, the mariner works on and awaits the issue. Thus should we deport ourselves on the seething ocean of sorrow. Hoping and work- 67:15 ing, one should stick to the wreck, until an irresistible propulsion precipitates his doom or sunshine gladdens the ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... condition of dreadful vassalage. Such mysterious beings overpower others with the sceptre and the glory of a superior nature,—acting upon them at times like the torpedo which electrifies or paralyzes the fisherman, at other times like a dose of phosphorous which stimulates life and accelerates its propulsion; or again, like opium, which puts to sleep corporeal nature, disengages the spirit from every bond, enables it to float above the world and shows this earth to the spiritual eye as through a prism, extracting from it the food most needed; or, yet again, like ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... sail or two would be very desirable; these instruments of propulsion do not appear, however, to have been used by the ancients. We first hear of a sail being employed at the time when Isis went in search of her husband Osiris, who was killed by his brother Typhon, and whose quarters were ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... frequently hard to be got at,—and so are the future guineas that now lie ripening and aurifying in the womb of some undiscovered Potosi; but dig, dig, dig, dig, Manning! I set to with an unconquerable propulsion to write, with a lamentable want of what to write. My private goings on are orderly as the movements of the spheres, and stale as their music to angels' ears. Public affairs, except as they touch upon me, and so turn into private, I cannot whip up ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... entirely unobservant. One must begin, no matter how dimly, to perceive something of the causes which are at work. By the incoming of the European to inland China a transformation is being wrought, not the natural growth of a gradual evolution, itself the result of propulsion from within, but produced, on the contrary, by artificial means, in bitter conflict with inherent instincts, inherited traditions, innate tendencies, characteristics, and genius, racial and individual. In the eyes of the Chinese of the old ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... application of an automatic block system to an electric railway where the rails are used for the return circuit of the propulsion current, it is necessary to modify the system as usually applied to a steam railway and introduce a track circuit control that will not be injuriously influenced by the propulsion current. This had been successfully accomplished ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... patent for improvements in the application of motive powers. One of these improvements consists in directing currents of air, or other gaseous fluids, through inverted troughs or channels, for the propulsion of boats and barges in the conveyance of goods and passengers. The troughs are placed longitudinally, one on each side of the vessel; or one may be placed between two vessels having one deck. Their ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... conceived the idea of constructing an improved series of railway engines, combining all the meritorious points in stationary and locomotive engines, with Isaac Watts' highly ingenious discovery of screw propulsion. For the Gregorian and Newtonian instruments simply differ in sending the rays received from the great mirror in different directions, and Dolland's discovery relates to the ordinary forms of telescopes with large lens, not with ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... legs alike do their share in the propulsion of the body, the legs perform by far the most important work, and the importance of a good "kick" cannot be too strongly urged. Though the action of the soles of the feet upon the water helps the "drive," the momentum is also given by the "wedge" ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... will be answered in a few days' time, no doubt, in view of the rapidity with which we are ripping through the water, under the action of a means of propulsion that I shall end by finding out all about. As regards the second, I am by no means so sure that my ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... was not to be so easily put down. Besides the consent and petitions, which Cowperwood could not easily get away from him, he had a new form of traction then being tried out in several minor cities—a form of electric propulsion by means of an overhead wire and a traveling pole, which was said to be very economical, and to give a service better than cables and ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... and distance of most of our ports from the markets supplied by European manufactures, for a long time to come make the home-supply the chief care of our artisans. They have, for such and other reasons, in some points lost ground of late. The revolution in the propulsion and construction of ships, for instance, has not found them prepared to take the advantage they have usually done of improvements. Not only do the British screw-steamers take undisputed possession of our trade ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... Charles had used him, and one of the grooms had always taken him to ride messages. He had notwithstanding had but little of the pleasure of speed for a long time, and when Dorothy at length gave him the rein, he flew as if every member of his body from tail to ears and eyelids had been an engine of propulsion. But Dorothy had more wings than Dick. Her whole being was full of wings. It was a small thing that she had not had a right gallop since she left Wyfern; the strength she had been putting forth to bear the Atlas burden that night lifted from her soul, was now left free ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... discoveries—the application of heat to the production of motive power. As long as water, which is a non-exhaustive source of motion, was used, the people were scattered over the land; or if segregation took place, it was in the neighborhood of running streams. The application of steam to the propulsion of machinery, and the discovery of engines capable of competing with the human hand, led to the substitution of machine-made fabrics for clothing, in place of homespun articles of domestic manufacture. This led ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... crew become a motive power, became in more senses than one the great instrument of progress on the sea. It gave the ship a power of manoeuvring independently of the wind, the same power that is the essence of advantage in steam propulsion. The centuries during which the sailing ship was the chief reliance of navigation and commerce were, after all, an episode between the long ages when the oar-driven galley was the typical ship, and the present age of steam beginning less than ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... once proved that a machine capable of raising itself in the air, wholly unaided from without, can be made, we have overcome with this apparently small result the whole difficulty. The principle of propulsion by means of a screw is by no means a novelty. It was first utilised in windmills, whose sails are nothing more nor less than an immense screw which is turned by the action of the wind on its surface. In the case of turbine water-wheels, where perhaps 970 cubic ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... to Betty as soon as he found opportunity. He did not quite know why. He did not stop to ask himself why. It was a purely instinctive propulsion. He followed his impulse as the needle swings to the pole; as an object released from the hand at a great height obeys the force of ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... confidential inquiry as to the whereabouts of Dr. Dimitri O. Voronoff, the noted Soviet rocket expert, designer of the new guided missile Marxist Victory, who vanished a week ago from the Josef Vissarionovitch Djugashvli Reaction-Propulsion Laboratories at Molotovgorod. It is feared in Government circles that this noted scientist has been abducted by agents of the United Peoples' Republics of East Asia, possibly to extract from him, under torture, information of a ...
— Operation R.S.V.P. • Henry Beam Piper
... is very large, thick, and as it turns down suddenly at right angles with the head, it much resembles an elephant's trunk shorn off at the mouth. Its length averages from eight to fourteen feet; there is no dorsal fin, and the tail is horizontal; colour blue, and white beneath. Its means of propulsion are two paddles, with which it also crawls along the bottom, and beneath which are situated the udders, with teats exactly like a cow's. Its flesh is far from bad, resembling lean beef in appearance, though hardly so good to the taste, and the skin can be manufactured into gelatine. I have often ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... born in Pennsylvania; began life as a miniature portrait and landscape painter, in which he made some progress, but soon turned to engineering; he was one of the first to apply steam to the propulsion of vessels, and devoted much attention to the invention of submarine boats and torpedoes; he built a steamboat to navigate the Hudson River, with a very slow rate of progress however, making only five ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... in the gravity propulsion plates too," Carse said shortly. "Their adjustment's been ruined by it, and we're out of control, turning over and over. I couldn't possibly see Judd. Well, we've got to go down to the plates ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... our hopes. What will fascinate us in the past will be the records of inventions, of great choices, of those alternatives on which destiny seems to hang. The splendid epochs will be interpreted as monuments of man's creation, not of his propulsion. We shall be interested primarily in the way nations established their civilization in spite of hostile conditions. Admiration will go out to the men who did not submit, who bent things to human use. We may see the entire tragedy of ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... relating to Temperature, Elasticity, and Expansion of Vapours, Liquids, and Solids. Part II. Papers on Energy and its Transformations. Part III. Papers on Wave-Forms, Propulsion ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... and I think of all that has passed. I hope ever that it has been for the best and pray for you always. Oh that your feet may be set in the right path and that we may walk hand in hand upon the way to Zion!'" Lindsay lowered his voice and read the last sentences rapidly, as if the propulsion of the first part of the letter sent him through them. Then he stopped abruptly, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... beneath it a huge wicker basket that served as a sort of house for Andree and his companions, and to the netting of this were lashed provisions, sledges, frame boats, and other appliances to meet the needs of the explorers if their balloon was wrecked on the northern ice. There was no means of propulsion, but three heavy guide ropes, trailing on the ground, afforded a feeble and uncertain control. The whole reliance of Andree was placed, consciously and with full knowledge of the consequences, on the possibility that a strong and favouring wind might ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... startling inventions of all is a machine that counteracts gravity. This, to my mind, is the greatest invention I had yet seen, and, strange to say, these fire creatures know nothing about means of propulsion except by hand power. If you were able to stand on the seething furnace of Alpha Centaurus, you would see these machines rise far into the shooting fire and beyond, as far as occupants can go without freezing to ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... receive a little voluntary assistance in the cultivation of his field; in travelling by boat he is accorded the place of honour and ease in the middle of the boat, and he is not expected to help in its propulsion. His principal rewards are the social precedence and deference accorded him and the satisfaction found in the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... that good. An important consequence of eating is to satisfy hunger, and this is the ordinary motive to eat; but it is a poor account of the physiological consequences. An important consequence of firing a gun is the propulsion of the bullet or shell; but there are many other consequences in the whole effect, and one of them is the heating of the barrel, which, accumulating with rapid firing, may at last put the gun out ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... inch of water, and runs at the marvelous speed of 3,000 revolutions per minute, or 50 revolutions per second, which is by far the most rapid rate of motion ever imparted to a water wheel. This is, also, beyond comparison the greatest fall applied to the propulsion of a wheel in America. The wheel at Meriden is of the most diminutive size, scarcely exceeding in dimensions the old-fashioned "turnip" watches which our grandfathers used to carry in their capacious vest pockets. ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... in a conveyance indeed unique. The descent of the mountain in sleds from the summit to the city below, through narrow lanes paved with small stones worn and slippery from years of service, was an experience long to be remembered. Our sled, without any means of propulsion but our own weight, glided rapidly down the hill over the smooth surface of the pavement like a toboggan on an icy slide. It was controlled by two men, who, sometimes running alongside, sometimes clinging to the ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... convulsion of the whole frame, which is always succeeded by relaxation. For the same reason, even libidinous thoughts, without any loss of semen, are debilitating, though in a less degree, by occasioning a propulsion of blood ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... discovery which both pleased and alarmed them. Such a float as they needed was at their call. There lay a half dozen logs and trees fastened together by several withes, and with enough buoyancy to bear them to the other side. Even the pole to be used in propulsion lay upon the heavy timbers that were pulled just far enough against the bank to prevent them floating off ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... cars were only perfected in the usual slow course of invention, and could neither have been constructed nor propelled a hundred years ago, for neither was the metal of which they are constructed produced, nor had the method of propulsion or even the propulsive power been developed. Inventors had to wait till science had given us in abundance a metal less than a quarter the weight of iron, but as strong and durable, and this was not until some fifty years ago when a process was discovered ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... 1858, a well-to-do farmer, of western New York, whittled out a spiral or augur-like screw-propeller, in miniature, which he thought admirably adapted to the canal. He soon after went to Buffalo, and contracted for a boat to be built, with two of his Archimedean screws for propulsion by steam. ...
— History of Steam on the Erie Canal • Anonymous
... canoe was approaching, still gliding noiselessly over the water, without any apparent power of propulsion, and in it were seated two men. One had a long white beard and a profusion of white hair. He was dressed entirely in white, and sat in the stern of the canoe. The other was Captain Justin Bellwood, quite unharmed, and looking very much ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... The silent propulsion was managed thus: the grand master of the paddle gripped its cross handle in both hands, working it so that its broad blade cut the water first backward then forward so dexterously that not even his own practised ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... in imminent danger; we had out all the firearms we could muster; these amounted to two rifles, two shot guns, and five revolvers. I watched with great keenness the motion of their arms that gives the propulsion to their spears, and the instant I observed that, I ordered a discharge of the two rifles and one gun, as it was no use waiting to be speared first. I delayed almost a second too long, for at the instant I gave the word several spears had left the enemy's ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... his thought, like a branch beneath the weight of its fruit. Bacon seems to have written his essays with Shakspeare's pen. There is a certain want of ease about the old writers which has an irresistible charm. The language flows like a stream over a pebbled bed, with propulsion, eddy, and sweet recoil—the pebbles, if retarding movement, giving ring and dimple to the surface, and breaking the whole into babbling music. There is a ceremoniousness in the mental habits of these ancients. Their intellectual garniture is picturesque, like the garniture ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... channels are shallow, poles are used, which the men handled very dexterously, nicking in and out amongst the rocks and rapids in the neatest way; but in the main the propulsion was by our paddles, a delight to me, having been bred to canoeing from boyhood. We stopped for luncheon at a lovely "place of trees" overhanging a deep, dark, alluring pool, where we knew there were fish, but had ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... things; all obey His first propulsion from the night; Wake thou and watch! the world is ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... afterthought. Why should men start upon the more difficult form and proceed to the easier? It is not their usual way. In learning to skate, for instance, they do not cut figures before practising loose and easy propulsion. ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... connection with the discovery of electric power and electric light. Perhaps the most important invention, however, was that of the working steam engine, made by Watt only about a hundred years ago. The most recent application of this form of energy has been in the propulsion of ships, which has already produced so great an effect upon commerce, navigation, and the spread of population over ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... accounts of the Caesarian section, and of the towering geniuses who had come safe into the world by it, cast upon this hypothesis? Here you see, he would say, there was no injury done to the sensorium;—no pressure of the head against the pelvis;—no propulsion of the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, either by the os pubis on this side, or os coxygis on that;—and pray, what were the happy consequences? Why, Sir, your Julius Caesar, who gave the operation a name;—and your Hermes Trismegistus, who was born so before ever the operation ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... having with due nicety ascertained, he clenched his fist, which in weight, size, and firmness, was not much surpassed by the hard, and ponderous paw of a full-grown tiger, and with all the force of that propulsion, which a formidable set of muscles afforded, he felled his rival to the ground, and not knowing that he was fallen, discharged many other blows, which only served to disturb the tranquillity of the air. The recumbent hero, whose head was ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... playing with them at first, and doing no more than to ascertain their speed and power of propulsion, and had all along intended to reserve themselves for this triumph at the last. As soon as we reached the winning point, I rose up to give the cheer of victory, but just at that moment, they suddenly backed water with their paddles, and in turning towards the boat, the ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... available working area. The telphers were built by the Dodge Cold Storage Company, and were operated by a 75-h.p. General Electric motor for hoisting and a 15-h.p. Northern Electric Company motor for propulsion. Their rated lifting capacity was 10,000 lb. at a speed of ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace and Francis Mason
... in its position, the Leviathan's tail acts in a different manner from the tails of all other sea creatures. It never wriggles. In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority. To the whale, his tail is the sole means of propulsion. Scroll-wise coiled forwards beneath the body, and then rapidly sprung backwards, it is this which gives that singular darting, leaping motion to the monster when furiously swimming. His side-fins only serve ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the guide, two other passengers and the four horses, trusted ourselves to a somewhat fragile raft. Accustomed as I was to the swift and sure steamers on the Elbe, I found the oars of the rowers rather a slow means of propulsion. It took us more than an hour to cross the fiord; but the passage was ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... the great grandfather of a man of the same name, now residing in Campden; so that if there be any truth in the tradition, the application of steam power to the propulsion of hulls must be long prior to the time of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 63, January 11, 1851 • Various
... steam alternately at both ends of the cylinder, it was too awkward and clumsy to become a practical navigator. Moreover, though it could pump admirably, it had not been taught to turn a crank. The French assert, that experiments in steam-propulsion were made on the Seine, by Count Auxiron and Perrier, in 1774, and on the Saone, by De Jouffroy, in 1782; but we know they led to no practical results, and the knowledge of them probably did not, for some years, travel beyond the limits of the French language. There is no satisfactory ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... leathery countenance told a falsehood. But he had made his experiment and failed. He knew what manner of man his captor was, and he had no mind for another lesson from him. He slouched to his horse, under propulsion of the revolver, and led ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... A note from Evans stated a recurrence of the old trouble. The big end of No. 1 cylinder had cracked, the machine otherwise in good order. Evidently the engines are not fitted for working in this climate, a fact that should be certainly capable of correction. One thing is proved; the system of propulsion is altogether satisfactory. The motor party has proceeded as a man-hauling ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... touch, between nature and man. "I am much better," he writes, "and my new and tender health is all over me like a voluptuous feeling." And whatever fame, or charm, or life-inspiring gift he has had as a speculative thinker, is the vibration of the interest he excited then, the propulsion into years which clouded his early promise of that first buoyant, irresistible, self-assertion. So great is even the indirect power of a sincere effort towards the ideal life, of even a temporary escape of ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... arc of the other's flight, Michael closed his jaws on the back and side of the neck. Such abrupt arrest in mid-flight by the heavier dog brought the fox-terrier down on deck with, a heavy thump. Simultaneous with this, Captain Duncan's second kick landed, communicating such propulsion to Michael as to tear his clenched teeth through the flesh and out of the ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... learning to the investigation of the origin of domestic and other implements and contrivances, inform us that the first boat was probably a log, on which the man sat astride, using a stick as a means of propulsion. In time the idea of hollowing the log occurred, Nature undoubtedly presenting the model and inviting the novice to squat inside. But what was the inhabitant of a certain island in the Gulf of Carpentaria to do since Nature failed to provide a tree big ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... tons 10 cwts.; a second-class, 5 tons 10 cwts., each with passengers; a Pullman car weighs about 30 tons. Our steamers consume 5 lbs. of coal per horse-power in one hour. And last, not least, one of the greatest improvements we have had in steam propulsion is the screw. Again, I may also name the great advantage derived from steam by our farmers in thrashing out grain. The engines principally used in farm-work are what are termed high-pressure, or of the same class as the locomotive. The great saving in cost in the first place, ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... left there, all alone on the verge, and before any of them knew where they were she was over it. Happily, she was unaware of the violence with which she went. She seemed to herself to move, downward indeed, but with a sure and slow propulsion. She believed herself challenged to the demonstration by the Colonel's attitude. The high distinction of it, that was remotely akin to Mr. Lucy's, somehow obscured and degraded her. She conceived ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... the exception of Miss Toddle, no customer appeared. The teams went slowly down the steep side of the Square in an unbroken line, and slowly down the street leading from its near corner. On the slope the horses were unable to go fast—being forced to stell themselves back against the heavy propulsion of the carts behind; and thus the procession endured for a length of time worthy its surpassing greatness. When it disappeared round the Bend o' the Brae the watching bodies disappeared too; the event of the day had passed, and vacancy ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... to swim like a dog in their initial attempts. This is a very easy and simple method of propulsion, mainly for the reason that the arms and legs are never ...
— Swimming Scientifically Taught - A Practical Manual for Young and Old • Frank Eugen Dalton and Louis C. Dalton
... Cumberland Road, people dwelling on the banks of the upper Ohio were startled by the spectacle of a large boat moving majestically down stream entirely devoid of sail, oar, pole, or any other visible means of propulsion or control. This object of wonderment was the New Orleans, the first steamboat to be launched ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... utilized for the first time for boring purposes the newly developed atomic disintegrators. Many holes equally spaced over the sphere were the outlets for the dissolving ray—most of them on the bottom and alternating with them on the bottom and sides were the outlets of powerful rocket propulsion tubes, which would enable it to rise easily from the hole it would presently blast into the earth. A small, tight-fitting door gave entrance to the double-walled interior, where, in spite of the space taken up by batteries and mechanisms and an enclosed gyroscope for keeping the borer on ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... not been removed by the practical working of our institutions in later times; for although the acquisition of additional territory and the application of steam to the propulsion of vessels have greatly magnified the importance of internal commerce, this fact has at the same time complicated the question of the power of the General Government over the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... be said to embrace all the engines now being manufactured in this country for the propulsion of steam vessels by the screw propeller. In their leading principles they also embrace nearly all paddle engines now being built, whether the cylinders be oscillating, fixed vertically, or inclined ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... BICYCLE PROPULSION.—So much has been invented for and said about bicycles, that it seems strange that anything is left to say or to do, yet here is a very novel idea. It is not so very long since wind and water were the only motor powers, but those days are so clearly superseded ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 42, August 26, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... is accomplished either by aspirating the air from the building, known as the vacuum or extraction method, or by forcing into the building air from without; this is known as the plenum or propulsion method. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... the chorus. The "Pip! pip!" was a new sound to them, having been introduced to represent the noise made by the propulsion of a motor-car, in which set the ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... the passage of a ship from the river Fulda into the Weser;" the other is in the handwriting of Leibnitz: "Papin's sidewheel ship." This last indorsement is of great value, as indicating the fact that Papin proposed to apply side wheels for the propulsion of his new invention. The following is a translation of Leibnitz' letter, the original of which I saw ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... enormous size, and are manned by crews of Shans, whose numbers vary according to their size. Without means of propulsion, the rafts simply drift with the stream, but are guided to some extent by a number of paddles fixed at either end, by which the crews endeavour, not always successfully, to keep them clear of shoals and ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... apparatus embodying the same principle as that later developed by Lord Kelvin in the well-known apparatus of the present day, a machine for cutting files automatically, various types of steam-engines, and finally his work in connection with the introduction of the screw-propeller as a means of propulsion for steam vessels. These are some of the important lines of work on which Ericsson was engaged during the twelve years of his life in London. In connection with some he was undoubtedly a pioneer, and deserves credit as an original inventor; in connection with others, his work was that ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... couple of years or so that they took the matter up, after a successful voyage made by the Archimedes, the first sea-going screw steamer. They then built a small craft called the Bee, fitted with both paddles and screw, to try which was the better means of propulsion. The screw had the best of it, and after the further experiment of building two vessels of the same size and power, the one with paddles the other with a screw, and finding the screw still superior, it was finally adopted as an auxiliary ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston |
