"Electrical current" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not a sound was to be heard through the afternoon stillness. Yet in spite of the tranquillity of the day and the apparent peace of the four figures that gazed so immovably out upon the reach of blue, an electrical current of suspense was evident in the four tense forms. They were not looking at the bay, exquisite as it was in its cerulean beauty. Instead, the head of each man was turned toward the road that skirted the harbor and wound its way between the pines ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... of the Spirit. I knew an old man, who had been a drunkard for over fifty years, similarly delivered. I knew a young man, the slave of a vicious habit of the flesh, who was set free at once by the fiery baptism. The electric current cannot transform the dead wire into a live one quicker than the Holy Spirit can flood a soul with light and love, destroy the carnal mind, and fill a man with power over ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... by us as heat. To do this, Langley invented a sort of artificial eye, which he called a bolometer, in which the optic nerve is made of an extremely thin strip of metal, so slight that one can hardly see it, which is traversed by an electric current. This eye would be so dazzled by the heat radiated from one's body that, when in use, it must be protected from all such heat by being enclosed in a case kept at a constant temperature by being ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... the wall were the remains of an electric switchboard. The copper switches were fused, the wires burned through. The huge cables that brought the electric current to the switchboard lay molten ...
— The Whispering Spheres • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... What swift electric current along the chain of association moved the doctor's next question. He was silent a minute before he spoke it; then spoke in a clear even voice. "May I ask you—is it impertinent—what first led you to this way of thinking?—Sophy says you were ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... inferred. But how inferred? It would be at bottom not a case of logical inference at all, but of empirical association. You may reply that many of the inferences of science are of this character; the inference, for example, that an electric current of a given direction will deflect a magnetic needle in a definite way; but the cases differ in this, that the passage from the current to the needle, if not demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain no doubt as to the final mechanical solution ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... course would cover an experimental quantitative treatment of the electric current, it would glance in an explanatory way at many of the phenomena of physical geography, and it would be correlated with a study of the general principles of chemistry. A detailed knowledge of chemical compounds is not a part of general education, it keeps better ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... charged with expressionless heat. For example, Miss Shipton's parasol dropped and she stooped to pick it up. "Let me pick it up," he said, and his lips quivered, and the let me pick it up—a poor, little, thin wire of words—was traversed by an electric current raising them to white-hot glow, and as powerful as that which flows through many mightier and more imposing conductors. What are words? "Good-bye," for example, is said every morning by thousands of creatures in the London suburbs as they run to catch their train, and the present writer ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... hydroxid, to free the caffein from the acid; or an acid, such as acetic, hydrochloric, or sulphurous, is used to form a more soluble salt of caffein. Other procedures effect the dissociation of the caffein-acid salt by dampening or immersion in a liquid and subjecting the mass to the action of an electric current. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... tell us of the dipping of the needle as the vessel sails in regions of the farthest north known. In reality, they are at the curve; on the edge of the shell, where gravity is geometrically increased, and while the electric current seemingly dashes off into space toward the phantom idea of the North Pole, yet this same electric current drops again and continues its course southward along the inside surface of the ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... ready for the supermarine voyage, the engineer loads up with a much more powerful charge than before. He prepares at the start for a speed of a mile in three seconds, then, when fairly out over the sea, a stronger electric current is applied to the huge charge, and a speed of a mile, or even more, a second is obtained. This fearful velocity is not permitted overland, for fear of collisions, as car routes cross each other. But no routes cross over the sea between St. John's and Galway, ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... tense voice of the old woman held Harry. She pointed with a withered forefinger which she held aloft and he felt as if an electric current were passing from it to him. A chill ran down his back and the hair lifted a little on his head. Jarvis and ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... will favor the absorption of the clot or obstruction to the nervous current. In some cases Fowler's solution of arsenic in teaspoonful doses twice a day in the drinking water proves beneficial. Occasionally benefit may be derived from the application of the electric current, especially in cases of roaring, facial paralysis, paralysis of the eyelid, etc. Nutritious but not too bulky feed, good ventilation, clean stabling, moderate exercise if the animal is capable of taking it, good grooming, etc., should be observed in ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... Scarcely had the electric current warmed the carburetor sufficiently before Jack returned, carrying a rifle, together with a quantity of cartridges. These he bundled ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... grim determination of those underground men of ours, whose skin was the color of the chalk in which they worked, who coughed in the dampness of the caves, and who packed high explosives at the shaft-heads—hundreds of tons of it—for the moment when a button should be touched far away, and an electric current would pass down a wire, and the enemy and his works ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... sexual power, the result of early indiscretions and marital excesses. One of his most unpleasant symptoms was severe pain in the portion of the urethra near the openings of the ejaculatory ducts. After he had been suffering more than usual for a few days, we applied the faradaic electric current in the manner indicated above, for about fifteen minutes. At the end of that time the pain was entirely removed, though considerable suffering had been caused by the passage of the instrument, so sensitive was the congested membrane. The pain did not return again for two or three ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... together of the lobes was caused exclusively by captured insects crawling over and repeatedly irritating the sensitive filaments; and this view seemed the more probable when I learnt from Dr. Burdon Sanderson that whenever the filaments of a closed leaf are irritated, the normal electric current is disturbed. Nevertheless, such irritation is by no means necessary, for a dead insect, or a bit of meat, or of albumen, all act equally well; proving that in these cases it is the absorption of animal matter which excites the lobes slowly to press ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... the section of Italian literature, my love," said Dr Middleton. "Well, Mr. Whitford, the laboratory—ah!—where the amount of labour done within the space of a year would not stretch an electric current between this Hall and the railway station: say, four miles, which I presume the distance to be. Well, sir, and a dilettantism costly in time and machinery is as ornamental as foxes' tails and deers' horns to an independent ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wonderingly. "Dark!—and yet it is blazing bright. Why can't we see it from Earth? Why is it dark?... I've an idea that the gas we came through is the answer. There is metal, we know, that conducts an electric current in only one direction: why not a gas that will ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... mate had not made one step towards it when a fearful explosion shook the "Albatross." The cabins flew into splinters. The lamps went out. The electric current suddenly failed. The darkness was complete. Most of the suspensory screws were twisted or broken, but a few ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... came here to live and really run the mill, that Ashley Street was all full of empty houses, without a light in them, that the old folks had died out of. But now the men have bought them up and live in them. It's just as bright, nights! With windows lighted up all over. Father's had the electric current run over there from the mill, now, and that doesn't cost anything except ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... not an attitude of the heart with the old Greek tragedians—a calm which, unlike theirs, insulates, so to speak, and is intended to insulate, the writer, to the end that his individuality, of which only the electric current of sympathy ever makes a reader conscious, may disappear, and the characters of the drama stand forth the more life-like from the complete concealment of the ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... fuel is burned in a steel bomb filled with compressed oxygen. The function of the oxygen, which is ordinarily under a pressure of about 25 atmospheres, is to cause the rapid and complete combustion of the fuel sample. The fuel is ignited by means of an electric current, allowance being made for the heat produced by such current, and by the burning of ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... long and so effectively followed by the Mongolian races in China, Korea and Japan. When the enormous water-power of these countries has been harnessed and brought into the foot-hills and down upon the margins of the valleys and plains in the form of electric current, let it, if possible, be in a large measure so distributed as to become available in the country village homes to lighten the burden and lessen the human drudgery and yet increase the efficiency ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... struggle. The telephone is only second in practical importance to the electric telegraph. Invented, as it were, only the other day, it has already taken its place as an appliance of daily life. Sixty years ago, the extraction of metals from their solutions, by the electric current, was simply a highly interesting scientific fact. At the present day, the galvano-plastic art is a great industry; and, in combination with photography, promises to be of endless service in the arts. Electric lighting is another great gift of science to civilisation, ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... these tree-things both create and respond to the patterned electrical impulses of the mind. It's something like the way a doctor creates fantasies by applying a mild electric current to the right places on a patient's brain. In the year we've been here, the trees—or some of them—have learned to read from and transmit to our minds. The range, they say, is around fifty feet. But you ...
— Tree, Spare that Woodman • Dave Dryfoos
... around it. Beauty is, then, a phenomenon belonging to the spiritualization of matter. It is a momentary transfiguration of the privileged object or being—a token fallen from heaven to earth in order to remind us of the ideal world. To study it, is to Platonize almost inevitably. As a powerful electric current can render metals luminous, and reveal their essence by the color of their flame, so intense life and supreme joy can make the most simple mortal dazzlingly beautiful. Man, therefore, is never more truly man than ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a sprocket wheel in the hoisting mechanism. On the lower end of the chain is hung an electro-magnet of sufficient magnetic strength to support the heaviest striking weights. When it is desired to drop the striking weight the electric current is broken and reversed by means of an automatic switch and current breaker. The height of drop may be regulated by setting at the desired height on one of the columns a tripping pin which throws the switch on the magnet and so ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... entering, and hold up your hands. You can feel the sharp tingle of the electric current as it escapes from your finger-tips. The storm is soon over, and you can see the sunbeams gilding the upper surfaces of the white clouds that sway and swing below you half way down the mountain sides, and completely hide from view the world beneath. The scenery shifts, like a drawn ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... Then, Murder! Thieves! and Fire! I shouted loud, For tightly clasped in writhing pain I bowed Within the thief trap, where I had been caught, Which Harry had explained, but I'd forgot; The sharp, excruciating agony, From the electric current, cruelly Vibrated through me from my head to feet, Urging the goaded blood to fever heat. At last the cruel knocks and shaking ceased, And from the horrid thing I got released; I dropped bewildered on a chair hard by, With tortured body and despairing cry, And ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... that has happened is that man has discovered existing laws and harnessed them to his use, and once more the real force motrice resides not in those silently-revolving engines that generate the electric current, but in the mind that devised and ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... the soldiers," there were countless boxes of jellies, preserves, and dried fruit. Everything palatable and transportable was brought, with streaming eyes and throbbing hearts, to the general contribution. From house to house the electric current of sympathy flowed, and by twelve o'clock Barton Common was a sight to behold. Seventeen boxes full of all imaginable comforts and alleviatives set off in four wagons for the railroad station, and Colonel Lunt himself went on with them to Washington to see that they were properly and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... man addressed went to his station by the hall door, and stood ready to control the electric current. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... boy slunk into the room. He was sharp-faced, pinched for food, and in tatters, as disreputable-looking as the hag herself. Meg whispered something to him, and, as though galvanized by an electric current, the boy shot up-stairs. He was soon back again with two brutal-looking men who looked suspiciously at Balcom and then shuffled into a corner, where they conferred eagerly with ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... with faith. He never doubted that the great Onondaga who had gone away four hundred years ago was serving them now in this, their utmost, need. Robert and Willet glanced at each other. They, too, believed. An electric current had passed from Tayoga to them, and, for the moment, their trust in Tododaho was almost as great as his. At the same time, a partial darkening of the night occurred, clouds floating up from the south and west, and dimming the moon ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of chemicals stood about. Against one wall was a huge transformer, from which the youthful scientist, Tom Swift, could draw almost any kind of electric current he might desire. ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... explanation of the phenomenon of mentality is the conception that the physical force and substance that we use up in a mental effort or emotional experience gives rise, through some unknown kind of molecular activity, to something which is analogous to the electric current in a live wire, and which traverses the nerves and results in our changing states of consciousness. This is the mechanistic explanation of mind, consciousness, etc., but it is the only one, or kind of one, that lends itself to scientific interpretation. Life, ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... eminent men had been educated, was founded in 1549. Among its old pupils was included Sir Humphry Davy, born in 1778, the eminent chemist who was the first to employ the electric current in chemical decomposition and to discover nitric oxide or "laughing gas." He was also the inventor of the famous safety-lamp which bears his name, and which has been the means of saving the lives of thousands ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... smile, which she knew so well, and the voluptuous glances of the musician, evidently excited her. I saw that, after the first interview, her eyes were already glittering, glittering strangely, and that, thanks to my jealousy, between him and her had been immediately established that sort of electric current which is provoked by an identity of expression in the smile ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... in a month or two, nor even in a year or two. Indeed the returned prodigal grew middle aged in the process. He also saw the possibilities of harnessing the water power above the factory to make electric current. This current was sold so cheaply that more and more factories were drawn to New Bethel until the fame of the city's products were known wherever the language ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... intensity to affect the ether in such a way that signals can be carried to a distance. Other disturbances, however, can be made in the ether, stronger than those which create light. If we charge a wire with an electric current and place a magnetic needle near it we find it moves the needle from one position to another. This effect is called an electro-magnetic disturbance in the ether. Again when we charge an insulated body with electricity we ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... property. At this day one may read the inscriptions on the bells which testify to the belief of the time. But as soon as the lightning rod was discovered by Franklin, and its absolute ability to conduct the electric current to the soil, bells were no longer requisitioned as antidotes to storms, and prayers and litanies ceased to be sung to petition the Divine clemency against the effects of the weather. In the same way an outbreak of cholera or ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... Matt in his deep, abstracted voice, pointing at the bluish cylinder. "Located it about a year ago. Last of the missing elements. Does strange tricks when subjected to heavy electric current. In each of those things that look like searchlights is one ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... heavens. Thunder rolls, and the electric current cuts the air, illuminating the wild scene with a picturesque touch that is almost ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... I tested the electric signals from the gatling platform to the cave, and made sure that they were all right; I tested and retested those which commanded the fences—these were signals whereby I could break and renew the electric current in each fence independently of the others at will. I placed the brook-connection under the guard and authority of three of my best boys, who would alternate in two-hour watches all night and promptly obey my signal, if I should have occasion to give it —three revolver-shots ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the window. She trembled from head to foot, as if an electric current had passed through her, and terror was reflected on her face. Then she sprang up, and, going to the window, placed her face against the window-pane. The expression of terror did not leave her even when, shading her eyes with the palms of ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... radium led to the recognition of the electron as the common constituent of all the bodies previously described as chemical elements, the minute particles of matter in question had been identified with the cathode rays observed in Sir William Crookes' vacuum tubes. When an electric current is passed through a tube from which the air (or other gas it may contain) has been almost entirely exhausted, a luminous glow pervades the tube manifestly emanating from the cathode or negative pole of the circuit. This effect was studied by Sir William Crookes very profoundly. Among ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater
... an electric current through a thick wire. You have the current, but you do not perceive any other force. But cut that thick wire, and connect the ends by means of a fine wire, and this fine wire will grow hot—there will be a TRANSFORMATION of ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... cool is this: All substances that conduct electricity resist the flow somewhat; there is something like friction between the wire and the electricity passing through it. The smaller around a wire is, the greater resistance it offers to the passing of an electric current. The filament of an electric lamp is very fine and therefore offers considerable resistance. However, if the filament were made of copper, even as fine as it is, it would take a much greater flow of electricity to ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... electric current through water (acidulated to make it a good conductor), as shown in Figure 39, we see bubbles of gas rising from the end of the wire by which the current enters the water, and other bubbles of gas rising from the end of the wire by which the ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... wonders, that the Almighty God will use frail humanity as the vehicles of His power, and will make Moses and Aaron shine with reflected glory. Man can send an electric current into a fragile carbon film and make it incandescent. He can send his voice across a continent, and make it speak on a distant shore. And the Lord God can do wonders compared with which these are only as the ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... cannot work, signor," he said, with a shrug of his shoulders, "now that the electric current is stopped." ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... not of any use, now, no more than are friends at the theatre. I have told you that it is the struggle of one against all, and the mystery, if there is one, is to turn on an electric current. The subject then is very important in the theatre. In a novel, one has time to win the reader over. What a difference! I do not say as you do that there is nothing mysterious in that. Yes, indeed, there is something very mysterious in one respect: namely ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... framework bristle with sharp penknife points. Held firmly in front of you, you will find everyone get out of your way. In entering a crowded omnibus or railway carriage, by touching a knob, let the heat generated by the electric current instantly cause the whole to become "red-hot." Dexterously moved about in front of you, you will find this a most thoroughly protecting weapon, clearing instantly a large space on each side of you, and even sometimes involving the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... move us to the depths? Why does the touch of one stranger's hand thrill us, while another's leaves us quite impassive? Whence springs that personal magnetism which has the power to set the very atoms of our being into new vibrations, like a highly charged electric current? ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... telephone and before the second guest arrived. In all her life Lucy had never looked more animated or more lovely. The musicians caught her enthusiasm and the high spirit which flowed from her like an electric current, and at once these things ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... or less favourable day by day. But when the separate phases themselves, the details of each day's proceedings, are telegraphed all over the world at the time, it is again obvious that nervousness prevailing throughout the world must act like an electric current and excite public opinion accordingly. We were fully aware of the disadvantage of this method of proceeding. Nevertheless we at once agreed to the wish of the Russian Government in respect of this publicity, desiring to meet them as far as possible, and also because we had nothing to conceal on ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... University of Gottingen. At first they used the voltaic pile, but abandoned it in favour of Faraday's recent discovery that electricity could be generated in a wire by the motion of a magnet. The magnetic key with which the message was sent Produced by its action an electric current which, after traversing the line, passed through a coil and deflected a suspended magnet to the right or left, according to the direction of the current. A mirror attached to the suspension magnified the ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... form becomes inert. The steam engine rotates under the impetus of an invisible gas called steam. Before steam filled its cylinder, the engine stood still, and when the impelling force is shut off its motion again ceases. The dynamo rotates under the still more subtile influence of an electric current which may also cause the click of a telegraph instrument or the ring of an electric bell, but the dynamo ceases its swift whirl and the persistent ring of the electric bell becomes mute when the invisible electricity is switched off. The form of the bird, the animal ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... only a few days before the beginning of the term, a young college man, Ralph Thurston, fresh from Bowdoin and needing experience, applied for and received the appointment. The thrill of rapture that ran like an electric current through the persons of the feminine students when they beheld Ralph Thurston for the first time,—dignified, scholarly, unmistakably the gentleman,—beheld him mount the platform in the assembly room, and knew him for their own, this can better be imagined than described! He was handsome, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... masonry made on purpose. Once arrived at the summit of Stony Hill, the wire supported on poles for a distance of two miles met a powerful pile of Bunsen passing through a non-conducting apparatus. It would, therefore, be enough to press with the finger the knob of the apparatus for the electric current to be at once established, and to set fire to the 400,000 lbs. of gun-cotton. It is hardly necessary to say that this was only to be done at the ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... the quarrel? Do we ever know what electric current precipitates the avalanche or decides a revolution? It may result from anything or nothing. But finally, Adolphe, after a period to be determined in each case by the circumstances of the couple, utters this fatal phrase, in the midst of a discussion: "Ah! when ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... established the electric current between the threads; a loud explosion followed; the house shook as if in an earthquake; the walls fell in. Hatteras, Altamont, and Bell hastened out of the magazine, ready to fire. But their guns were not needed; four of the five ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... our balls are self-finding," said Adonis. "The ball in use now is a recent invention of Vulcan's. They cost twelve hundred dollars a dozen. They are made of liquefied electricity. We take the electric current, liquefy it, then solidify it, then mould it into the form of a sphere. Inside we place a little gong, that begins to ring as soon as the ball lands. The electricity in it is what makes it fly so rapidly and so far, and ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... priests rushed toward him to expel him and give him a tongue-lashing for his impudence, when a hand was thrust out, and they beheld upon a finger a great green stone. They stopped as suddenly as though they had met an invisible electric current. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... on wire, loosen nuts on connections, make faulty splices and faulty connections in wiring, to waste electric current and reduce the power of electric motors, the power output or cause short circuiting in direct-current motors: Loosen or remove commutator holding rings. Sprinkle carbon, graphite, or metal dust on commutators. Put a little grease or oil at the contact points of commutators. ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... came over the young man, as if the word had been an electric current suddenly shot into him. ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... retained by surrounding them with bodies which did not conduct it; and in 1745 the Leyden jar was invented, which led to the knowledge that the force of electricity could be extended through an indefinite circuit. The French savants conveyed the electric current through a circuit of twelve ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... raising the potential, we might, even with frequencies obtained from a dynamo machine, intensify the action to such a degree as to bring the terminal to melting heat. But with such low frequencies we would have to deal always with something of the nature of an electric current. If I approach a conducting object to the brush, a thin little spark passes, yet, even with the frequencies used this evening, the tendency to spark is not very great. So, for instance, if I hold a metallic ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... The pawl was connected with a lever, M, fixed at the top. On the face of the wheel a little pin rotates with the wheel. On the side of the clock case was a contact maker, which closed the circuit by the pin on the ratchet wheel, R, once every minute. The weight was lifted by the electric current, and by its fall gave an impulse to the pendulum. The pendulum was a free swinging pendulum for 59 sec., and the increase of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... plug, fitted it into the hole, and welded the seams closed. The tube was sealed. When electric current fired the rocket head, the thorium carrying the plutonium wedge would be driven forward to meet the wedge in the back. And, unless Rip had miscalculated the mass of the two pieces, they would have their nuclear blast. Rip ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... mistake the fervour in his voice nor the glow in his eyes. Her wondrous, yellowish orbs looked steadily into his, and he was satisfied. They paid tribute to the emotion that moved him to the depths of his being. Love leaped up to him from those sweet, tired eyes; leaped with the unerring force of an electric current that finds its lodestone ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... outlook enabled us to make, and which we supplemented by a visit the next day. We preferred, after the Barmecide lunch at our hotel, taking the tram-car that noisily and more noisily clambers up and down, and descending into the town by it. The ascent is so steep that at a certain point the electric current no longer suffices, and the car bites into the line of cogs with its sort of powerful under-jaw and so arrives. Yet it is a kindly little vehicle, with a conductor so affectionately careful in transporting the stranger that I felt after a single day we should soon become brothers, or at least ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... we all went to the dining-room together. I shall never forget, the longest day I live, just where our table for four stood, and how a group of gabbling tourists had the three or four tables nearest to us, and how the lights, due to some trouble with the electric current, winked now and then, like the stage lights in a theater ticking ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... utensils on. If possible, install a gas range, or an electric range if current is cheap enough to warrant. The range should, if possible, have an oven heat regulator. Where gas is unavailable and cost of electric current high, install a good oil stove with an oven. Refrigerator should be on porch or vestibule just outside kitchen door or should be in the kitchen near the back door away from the stove. If space permits, table next to refrigerator ...
— Better Homes in America • Mrs W.B. Meloney
... clockwork, a carriage is made to traverse close to the paper. In some instruments this carriage is furnished with a metal point, and in others with a stylographic ink pen. The point or pen is made to touch the paper by an electromagnet, the electric current of which is closed by the observer at the transit instrument, and a mark is recorded on the revolving cylinder. The movement of the same point or pen is also controlled by a standard clock, so that at the end of each second a mark is made. The cylinder makes one revolution ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... is the most essential of all contrivances in the operation and use of electricity. It is the piece of mechanism which does the physical work of almost every electrical apparatus or machine. It is the device which has the power to convert the unseen electric current into motion which may be observed by the human eye. Without it electricity would be a ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... the man's dazed sensibilities a sound different from those he had been hearing: it was a human voice, mingled with the measured thud of oars in their sockets. It roused him like an electric current and gave him strength to cry out hoarsely. Some one answered him; then out of the darkness to seaward emerged a deeper blot, which loomed up hugely yet proved to be no more than a life-boat banked full of people. ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... the conversation has been as lead, but the smile does not subside; it only passes through the endless variations that succeed each other from the inane grin to the affected simper which is meant to be tender. The whole face moves perpetually, as the facial muscles of a corpse, excited by an electric current, seem to parody all the expression ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... 1842 Morse laid the first submarine telegraph in the world, from Governors Island in New York harbor to New York city. It consisted of a wire wound with string and coated with tar, pitch, and india rubber, to prevent the electric current running off into the water. It was laid on October 18, and the next morning, while messages were being received, the anchor of a vessel caught ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... kilowatt of current used between Trenton and Albany, the New York metropolitan area included. Except for a few little storage-battery or Diesel generator systems, that couldn't handle one tenth of one per cent of the barest minimum load, it's been the only source of electric current here since 1962, when the last coal-burning power plant was dismantled. Knock this plant out and you darken every house and office and factory and street in the area. You immobilize the elevators—think what that would mean in lower and midtown Manhattan alone. And the subways. ...
— Day of the Moron • Henry Beam Piper
... 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 end for ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... delight in these things, I reached the railway station at Lauterbruennen, from whence the little train is driven far up the mountain, even into the very heart of the Jungfrau, by an electric current generated by a turbine, itself driven by the torrent at our feet, the waters of which have descended from the glaciers far above, to which it will carry us. In a few minutes I was gently gliding in the train up the to the "Wengern Alp" and the "Little Scheidegg"—a slope up which I have ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... Constant had committed suicide by Esoteric Buddhism, as witness his devotion to Mme. Blavatsky, or he had been murdered by his Mahatma, or victimized by Hypnotism, Mesmerism, Somnambulism, and other weird abstractions. Grodman's great point was—Jessie Dymond must be produced, dead or alive. The electric current scoured the civilized world in search of her. What wonder if the shrewder sort divined that the indomitable detective had fixed his last hope on the girl's guilt? If Jessie had wrongs why should she not have avenged them herself? Did she not always remind the ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... darkness, and groped mentally for the familiar sense of that higher mind of my mind which had always seemed to be close at hand as it were, closing the passage, and yielding support, but there was no electric current. A blank was there instead of IT: I couldn't find anything. Now, at the age of nearly fifty, my power of getting into connection with it has entirely left me; and I have to confess that a great help has gone out of my life. Life has become curiously ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... spoken when a single shot startled the echoes of the rocks, and instant alertness passed like an electric current through the squadron. The advance guard, which had already entered the defile, consisted of three promising young Pathans from Denvil's troop; and anxiety for the fate of his favourites pricked the Boy ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... reason ask a man to aerate his lungs with his head submerged in water—when you can expect him to control the movements of his limb while you apply an electric current to its motor nerve—then, but not till then, speak to a confirmed opium-eater of "exerting his will;" reproach him with want of "determination," and complacently say to him, "Cast it from you and bear the torture for a time." Tell him, too, at the same time, to "do without atmospheric ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... needed no second bidding. Once more turning on the electric current, he set the powerful pumps in motion and the submarine began to rise. Then, aided by Captain Weston and Mr. Damon, the young inventor carried his father to a couch in the main cabin. Mr. Sharp took charge ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... has such a facile, emotional tail as the red squirrel. It seems as if an electric current were running through it most of the time; it vibrates, it ripples, it curls, it jerks, it arches, it flattens; now it is like a plume in his cap; now it is a cloak around his shoulders; then it is an instrument to point and emphasize his states of emotional excitement; every movement of his ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... utter want of synchronism. The unequal and slow sensitiveness of the selenium likewise obstructed the proper working of the apparatus. Now, without a relative simplicity in the arrangement of the conducting wires intended to convey to a distance the electric current with its variations of intensity, without a perfect and rapid synchronism acting concurrently with the luminous impressions, so as to insure the simultaneous action of transmitter and receiver, without, in fine, an increased sensitiveness ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... this very light to such perfection, turning over page after page of well-nigh incredible description of the country which has raised the system of "booming" to a high art, till my brain reels with an Arabian Nightish flavour of exaggeration, and turning off the electric current, I am gradually lulled to sleep by the rhythmical vibrations of the steamer, the sole reminder that I am in reality sleeping upon a ship and about to enjoy ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... scientists, Niardet, Wilde, Brush, Fuller, and many others of less note, busied themselves with the work of invention. Especially did Gramme and Siemens devote their scientific genius to the work of turning to good account the knowledge now fully possessed of the transformability of the electric current into light. ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... certain invisible rays resembling, in many respects, rays of light, which are set free when a high pressure electric current is discharged through a vacuum tube. A vacuum tube is a glass tube from which all the air, down to one-millionth of an atmosphere, has been exhausted after the insertion of a platinum wire in either ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... character of the movement which follows, the observer places galvanometers in connection with various members of the body and observes in which of the galvanometers the current comes out of the animal's body (the galvanometer being a very delicate instrument for indicating the presence of an electric current). In this way it is determined along what pathways and to what organs the ordinary vital stimulation passes from the brain, provided it be granted that the electric current takes ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... men who at midnight had been stern and silent were now emitting that terror-instilling sound known as the "rebel yell." A space was quickly cleared in the crowd, and a rope placed about his neck, when from somewhere came the suggestion, "Burn him!" It ran like an electric current. Have you ever witnessed the transformation of human beings into savage beasts? Nothing can be more terrible. A railroad tie was sunk into the ground, the rope was removed, and a chain brought and securely coiled around the victim and the stake. There he stood, a man only in form and ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... M. Tessie du Motay, but by the direct decomposition of slightly acidulated water, by means of a battery made of new elements, invented by himself. Thus there were no costly materials, no platinum, no retorts, no combustibles, no delicate machinery to produce the two gases separately. An electric current was sent through large basins full of water, and the liquid was decomposed into its two constituent parts, oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen passed off at one end; the hydrogen, of double the volume of its late associate, at the other. As a necessary precaution, ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... fuse (No. 1) consists of a mixture of sulphide of copper, phosphide of copper, chlorate of potash, and No. 2 of a mixture of gun-cotton and gun-powder. They are detonated by means of a platinum wire heated to redness by means of an electric current. Bain's fuse mixture is a mixture of subphosphide of copper, sulphide of antimony, and ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... six-and-a-half years of age, bright, happy, and spoke English thoroughly well. From infancy he had been distinguished for this faculty, variable with the state of the atmosphere. As a rule, the act of shaking hands was generally attended by a quivering sensation like that produced by an electric current, and contact with his tongue gave ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... "defense" and all other national interests are controlled by the "high commandment," consisting at the most of forty or fifty men, while the remaining sixty-five millions of the people are obedient puppets, nourished on falsehoods, where the popular emotion can be turned on like an electric current at the order of the "high commandment,"—now against this enemy, now against that one,—first hate of English, then hate of Italians, now hate of Americans—it is natural that a high government functionary should despise all popular effervescence and misread its manifestations ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... on the electric current, and the apparatus began to sputter. The pungent odor of ozone from the electric discharge filled the room. Through the lead-glass bowl I could see the X-ray tube inside suffused with its Peculiar, yellowish-green light, divided into two hemispheres of different shades. That, I knew, was the cathode ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... His face grew pale and bright as though some electric current had been turned into his veins; his eyes, looking up from the writing, but not returning to her, had the look given by some drug which is meant to stupefy, but which taken in an overdose intoxicates. ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... give almost anything if I could have in a storage battery beside me now some of the electric current that was forever flowing out of my own mother, or out of Richard Watson Gilder, or out of Hayd Sampson, a glorious old "inglorious Milton" of a master by proxy whom I once found toiling in a small livery-stable in Minnesota. My faith is firm that some such ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... occupying a position nearly impregnable because so mountainous, were defended by every modern device. They were protected with numerous machine guns, surrounded by wire entanglements through which ran a strong electric current. These lines of trenches followed without interruption from the banks of the Isonzo to the summit of the mountains which dominate it; they formed a kind of formidable staircase which had to be conquered step by step ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... the meeting like an electric current, and a blessing came at once to his own soul and to the ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... electric current as it passes through a solution is distributed among three factors, first, its potential, which is measured in volts, and corresponds to what is called "head" in a stream of water; second, current strength, ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... carries at present a powerful wireless-sending apparatus, the electric current for which is furnished by one of the motors. These motors, five in number, are of the six-cylinder Mercedes type, furnishing a total of 1,200 horsepower. Four of the motors are usually in service, the fifth being held in reserve, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... experiment just described we began with a platinum wire at an ordinary temperature, and gradually raised it to a white heat. At the beginning, and even before the electric current had acted at all upon the wire, it emitted invisible rays. For some time after the action of the current had commenced, and even for a time after the wire had become intolerable to the touch, its radiation was still invisible. The question now arises, What becomes ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... the first time they recognize in his words the truth that makes of slaves free men, of classes a brotherhood, then it is not difficult to see wherein lies the lightning-like speed with which the electric current passes from heart to heart. Such a man was Buddha, such was the essential of his teaching; and such was the inevitable rapidity of Buddhistic expansion, and the profound influence of the shock ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... already broken; for, the whole chain being but an electric current from a vicious imagination, I have destroyed the whole by breaking the first link. Or was it but a cluster from a poisonous vine, then I have killed the branches by cutting the vine. I will, however, expose the other three ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... have been taken and devices adopted to prevent a failure of the electric power and the consequent delays of traffic. An electro pneumatic block signal system has been devised, which excels any system heretofore used and is unique in its mechanism. The third rail for conveying the electric current is covered, so as to prevent injury to passengers and employees from contact. Special emergency and fire alarm signal systems are installed throughout the length of the road. At a few stations, where the road is not ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... on it either," admitted Bob. "But from what he said and what I've read, it seems to be a sort of equalizer, for the electric current, storing it up when it's strong and giving it out when it's weak. It prevents the current getting too strong at times and burning ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... streams usually results from dropping a little water a long way. In the mountains water is dropped many hundreds of feet upon the turbines which move the dynamos that produce the electric current. Water power on navigable streams is usually produced by dropping immense volumes of water a short distance, as twenty feet, fifteen feet, or even less. Every stream is a unit from its source to its mouth, and the people ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... like the days that immediately preceded it, except that rapid progress was made toward the restoration of the city to a habitable condition. Electric current was supplied Monday night in a limited residential district and in a few downtown buildings, and the narrow zone of street lighting was extended. Automobile fire engines were brought overland from Cincinnati to assist in ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... Agamemnon, the flagship of the British fleet at Sebastopol, and upon the Niagara, a magnificent new frigate of the United States navy; but, when five miles of cable had been paid out, it caught in the machinery and parted. On the second trial, when two hundred miles at sea, the electric current was suddenly lost, and men paced the decks nervously and sadly, as if in the presence of death. Just as Mr. Field was about to give the order to cut the cable, the current returned as quickly and mysteriously as it had disappeared. The ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... the ship by electric current, or something I suppose," said Frank listlessly. "I wonder where the engineer is? ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Now the interesting thing about this mixture, which we call air, is that the only really "live" and vital part of it for breathing purposes is the one-fifth of oxygen, the four-fifths of nitrogen being of no use to our lungs. In fact, if you split up the air with an electric current, or by some other means, and thus divide it into a small portion of pure oxygen (one-fifth), and a very much larger portion (four-fifths) of nitrogen, the latter would as promptly suffocate the animal that tried to breathe it as if ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... The facts on which this law is based are these. It is observed that, if the sensory nerves are agitated by an excitant which remains constant, the sensations received by the patient differ according to the nerve affected. Thus, the terminals of an electric current applied to the ball of the eye give the sensation of a small luminous spark; to the auditory apparatus, the current causes a crackling sound; to the hand, the sensation of a shock; to the tongue, a metallic flavour. Conversely, excitants wholly different, but affecting the same nerve, give ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... good many years ago, by Dr Johnstone Stoney, for the unit charge of electricity which is carried by an atom of hydrogen when hydrogen atoms move in a liquid or gas under the directing influence of the electric current. Some chemists speak of the electrons, which are the [beta]-rays from radium, and the kathode rays produced in almost vacuous tubes, as non-material particles of electricity. Non-material means devoid of mass. The method by which approximate determinations have been made ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... identity of the brain with a galvanic battery." The experiment of inducing muscular action in a corpse, by applying galvanism, is sufficiently well known. To borrow an illustration from Sidney Smith, it would seem, that, if we only knew to what organs of the brain to direct an electric current, an automaton, or a dead man, might be made to hold an argument, "at least as ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... incapable of pain. The patient's hands were thrust through a screen; on the other side of which the hypnotist made passes above the finger which was to become rigid. The lookers-on selected the finger, and the insensibility was tested by a strong electric current. The effect was also produced without passes, the operator merely pointing at the selected finger, and 'willing' the result. If he did not 'will' it, nothing occurred, nor did anything occur if he willed without pointing. The proximity of the operator's hand produced no effect ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... with a chronograph, the precise instant of start to within a thousandth of a second being automatically registered. Velocimeters are a familiar application of electricity somewhat analogous. In these, wires are cut by the projectile at different points in its flight, and the breaking of the electric current causes the appearance of marks on a surface moving along at a known speed. The velocity of the projectile in going from one wire to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... other, that he could count the fierce throbbing of the artery in her round snowy throat, and see the shadow of her long lashes; and again some electric current flashed from her feverishly bright eyes, burning its way to the secret chambers of his selfish heart, melting the dross that ambition and greed had slowly cemented, and dropping one deathless spark ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... room seemed to vibrate with life, and their bodies to be so charged with an electric current so etherial that it seemed that their spirits must be freed from all earthly hold. And then there came a calm over all. The features of Dawn seemed to change to those of one so familiar to them in their early days, ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... just as important an item, in determining the strength of current which can be maintained upon it with a given amount of battery-force, as the length of the conductor. To produce the effects by which the messages are expressed at the end of a telegraphic wire or cable, it is necessary that the electric current should have a certain intensity or strength. Now the intensity of the current transmitted by a given voltaic battery along a given line of wire will decrease, other things being the same, in the same proportion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... discouragement and failures, we claim our great heritage, "life and truth and force, like an electric current," will permeate our lives until we enter ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... faithfulness surround the blind Pontiff. Before him all fall on their faces. Khans and Hutuktus approach him on their knees. Everything about him is dark, full of Oriental antiquity. The drunken blind man, listening to the banal arias of the gramophone or shaking his servants with an electric current from his dynamo, the ferocious old fellow poisoning his political enemies, the Lama keeping his people in darkness and deceiving them with his prophecies and fortune telling,—he is, however, not an entirely ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... profession of engineering has called to the youth of the land with an almost irresistible voice. The development of steam and gasoline engines, of the electric current, and of a welter of machinery called for engineers. The specialization of engineering practice into production, chemical, industrial, municipal, efficiency, mining, construction, concrete, drainage, irrigation, landscape, and other phases, has still further increased the demand. Some few engineers, ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... outgoing motion, discharging force. This force is like live steam. An emotion is the driving part of an instinct. It is the dynamic force, the electric current which supplies the power for every thought and every action ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... her up in his arms, lifting her off her little feet, and as quickly setting her down, his eyes snapping, his whole face aglow. The joy bottled up in the child seemed to have swept through him like an electric current. ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... these four elements? Oxygen and nitrogen are free as air, and as we have seen in the second chapter, their direct combination by the electric spark is possible. Hydrogen is free in the form of water but expensive to extricate by means of the electric current. But we need more carbon than anything else and where shall we get that? Bits of crystallized carbon can be picked up in South Africa and elsewhere, but those who can afford to buy them prefer to wear them rather ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... to the recent experimental researches with reference to the functions of various portions of the brain, prosecuted by Dr. Ferrier, of England. He applied the electric current to different parts of the cortical substance of the cerebrum in lower animals which had been rendered insensible by chloroform, and by it could call forth muscular actions expressive of ideas and emotions. Thus, in a cat, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... Drying Oils; The Bleaching of Linseed Oil — The Manufacture of Boiled Oil; The Preparation of Drying Oils for Use in the Grinding of Paints and Artists' Colours and in the Manufacture of Varnishes by Heating over a Fire or by Steam, by the Cold Process, by the Action of Air, and by Means of the Electric Current; The Driers used in Boiling Linseed Oil; The Manufacture of Boiled Oil and the Apparatus therefor; Livache's Process for Preparing a Good Drying Oil and its Practical Application — The Preparation of Varnishes for Letterpress, Lithographic and Copperplate Printing, for Oilcloth and Waterproof Fabrics; ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... of lightning are well known. There is nothing inherently impossible, therefore, in supposing that a table can be "levitated" into the air, under unusual conditions; it is simply the manifestation of an unknown energy—of which, doubtless, there are many. We can manipulate and control the electric current; but we do not know yet precisely what it is. Similarly, we can study the effects of many of these curious biological forces, without understanding their true nature. Above all, it behooves us to keep an open mind, and not to ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington |
