"Astronomical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... number of known analogies; for if a theory be required to embrace some false principle, it becomes more visionary in proportion as facts are multiplied, as would be the case if geometers were now required to form an astronomical system on the assumption of ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... commission in the twenty-fifth of Xerxes, that the walls were two years and four months in building, and that they were finished on the twenty-eighth of Xerxes, sect. 7, 8. It may also be remarked further, that Josephus hardly ever mentions more than one infallible astronomical character, I mean an eclipse of the moon, and this a little before the death of Herod the Great, Antiq. B. XVII. ch. 6. sect. 4. Now on these two chronological characters in great measure depend some of the most important points belonging to Christianity, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... of the colossi) clearly points to 453 B.C. as the year of the building. At all events, Barth, Stevenson, Gibson, Reeves, and some other scientists, who being Westerns can have none of the prejudices proper to the native Pundits, have formed this conjecture on the basis of some astronomical data. Besides, the conjunction of the planets stated in the inscription leaves no doubt as to the dates, it must be either 453 B.C., or 1734 of our era, or 2640 B.C., which last is impossible, because Buddha and Buddhist monasteries are ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... kind of competitive examination is an examination in writing. This is entirely appropriate for certain classes of work, for lawyers, stenographers, typewriters, clerks, mathematicians, and assistants in an astronomical observatory, for instance. It is utterly inappropriate for carpenters, detectives, and mounted cattle inspectors along the Rio Grande—to instance three types of employment as to which I had to do battle to prevent ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... omitted details not essential; e.g. that in the first period men were born from the earth and only in the second propagated themselves. The period of 36,000 years, known as the Great Platonic Year, was probably a Babylonian astronomical period, and was in any case based on the Babylonian sexagesimal system and connected with the solar year conceived as consisting of 360 days. Heraclitus seems to have accepted it as the duration of ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... German transcendentalists, so strangely devised and became enamored of,—the grotesque views of men and things, the funny universe altogether, which made up both the popular and the learned thought of the Middle Ages,—the Buddhistic Orient, with its subtile metaphysical illusions, its unreal astronomical heavens, its habits of repose and its tornadoes of passion,—such are instances of great diversities of character, which would be hardly accountable to each other on the supposition of mutual sanity. They suggest a difference of ideas, moods, habits, and capacities, which in contemporaries and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... before the reader, show how thoroughly he must have drunk in the beauties of nature; the images retained in his mind became, like words to the ordinary man, the signs by which he thought, and, as such, formed an important element in the power of his thinking. I have seen his Astronomical Discourses disparagingly dealt with by a slim and meagre critic, as if they had been but the chapters of a mere treatise on astronomy—a thing which, of course, any ordinary man could write—mayhap even the critic himself. ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... is fixed. A vernier, V is carried by the box, A, E, and both turn with the telescope. A very light lozenge-shaped magnetic needle, a, b, is pivoted in the exact centre of the graduated circles, Q R, and M. The true meridian is determined by any convenient astronomical method, and the telescope is used for the purpose. The variation of the needle from the meridian thus determined gives ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... implying that we have never gone dinnerless. Diurnal, the scientific term, is used exactly, whether applying to the period of daylight or to the whole twenty-four hours. A diurnal flower closes at night; a diurnal motion is precisely coincident with the astronomical day. In poetry, however, diurnal is often used for daily. "Give us this day our bread." "The rotation of the earth on its axis is the cause of our day and night." "Fred and I went for our ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... unfinished enterprises, and as many paradoxes and inconveniencies. No water in fountains, water in toilets only during part of an Earth-day. English, French, Spanish, German, Greek and Arabic spoken, to mention a few of the languages. An astronomical observatory; a selenographic museum, already open, though less than half completed. And of course it was against the law not to work for more than seventy-two consecutive hours. And over the whole setup there seemed to hang the question: Can Man really live in space, or does his ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... preeminently true of the concept of time, the concept of space is fairly well cultivated by geologic study, though far less effectively than is done by astronomical study. Astronomy and geology work happily together in contributing to ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... hours of unblushing idleness under a glorious sun—idleness fostered and encouraged until it seems one great exertion to call a fly, and another to subside into it—idleness on matchless moonlight nights, on land or on water—idleness with an affectation of astronomical study, just up to speculating on the identity of Aldebaran or Arcturus, but scarcely equal to metaphysics—idleness that lends itself readily to turning tables and automatic writing, and gets some convincing phenomena, and finds out that so-and-so ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... sailing in and out of Dusky Bay, with an Account of the adjacent Country, its Produce, and Inhabitants: Astronomical and Nautical Observations. ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... mysterious. Old distaff-whorls, armlets, etc., have, in this illogical spirit, been sometimes described as Druidical amulets and talismen; ornamented rings and bosses from the ancient rich Celtic horse-harness, discovered in sepulchral barrows, have been published as Druidical astronomical instruments; and in the last century some columnar rock arrangement in Orkney was gravely adduced by Toland as a Druidical pavement. It is this craving after the mysterious, this reprehensible irrationalism, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... Germans left Peking after the Boxer Rebellion they took with them the astronomical instruments which had hung for centuries on its walls. How the Celestial equivalent of Old Moore has managed to translate the message of the stars without their assistance I cannot imagine; but the Chinese Government does not appear to be worrying, for, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... or advances, as Jupiter and Venus with relation to the earth. The planet in the smaller orbit moves faster than that in the larger, so that the intervening distances wax and wane, though all are going in the same general direction. In the case of the members of the solar system, astronomical record can tell when even a most distant known planet has been in opposition or conjunction; but the earth has scarcely been habitable since the sun was last in its present position in its orbit around Cosmos. The curve ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... In harmony with this idea, the entire length of the broad ceiling overhead was painted a pale blue; it was divided into two large panels with ornate borders; each panel was dotted with stars and planets in such a methodical way as to form a complete astronomical map of the visible heavens, both northern and southern hemispheres. This, with several of the large drop curtains, served as adjuncts to the well equipped observatory which was located in one of the large towers at the rear ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... an essay at the Brussels Congress to show, from the astronomical observations of the Egyptians and Assyrians, that 11,542 years before our era man existed on the earth at such a stage of civilization as to be able to take note of astronomical phenomena, and to calculate with considerable accuracy the ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... three terrestrial globes and an astronomical one with constellations standing on a table. A number of very tawdry articles were lying about on the other pieces of furniture; such were a metal dog holding a ten-shilling watch, paper frames, cheap imitation leather articles, numerous photographs of the ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... found men who could see the satellites of Jupiter with the naked eye. These men have made little advance in civilization, yet they are far superior to us in their accuracy of vision. It is a curious fact that not a single astronomical discovery of importance has been made through a large telescope, the men who have advanced our knowledge of that science the most working with ordinary instruments backed by most ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... intimate connection with Sir Walter Raleigh; his long close companionship with Henry Percy ; his correspondence with Kepler; his participation in Raleigh's 'History of the World;' his invention of the telescope and his consequent astronomical discoveries ; his scientific disciples ; his many friendships and no foeships ; his blameless life ; his beautiful epitaph in St Christopher's church, and his long slumber in the 'garden' of the Bank ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... caverns which concealed Egypt's mysteries. Everything was gradually accumulated in these underground store-houses,—the engraved talismans, the slabs of stone on which were deeply carved the geometrical and astronomical sciences; indestructible glass chests containing papyri, on which were written the various discoveries made in beneficial drugs, swift poisons, and other medicines. And among these many things were thirty great jars full of precious stones, some of which were marvels of the earth. They are there ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... derived their astrological superstitions from the Chaldeans, becoming ignorant of the astronomical hieroglyphics, by degrees looked upon the names of the signs as expressing certain powers with which they were invested, and as indications of their several offices. The sun, on account of its splendour and enlivening ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... take Strasbourg on their route, to visit its cathedral,—the spire of which is the highest in the world, being four hundred and sixty feet high,—and to see its wonderful astronomical clock. ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... not far from Radley, also has a church, and before its altar is the grave of Dean Fell, once its rector, who died of grief on hearing of the execution of Charles I. From the tower of this church Friar Bacon, the hero of the story of the brazen head, is said to have made astronomical observations: this renowned friar, Roger Bacon, has come down to us as the most learned man that Oxford ever produced. Bacon's Study was near the Folly Bridge, across the Thames on the road to Oxford, and it survived until 1779, when ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... swept by the greater viewpoint. Awed by the mysteries of nature, we realize how very small and unimportant we are in the vast scheme of things. We envisage the infinite reaches of astronomical space overhead. Realms of largeness unfathomable. And at our feet, everywhere, are myriad entrances into the infinitely small. With ourselves in between—with our fatuous human consciousness that we are of ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... indispensable tool for implementing planning, but too weak for some metropolitan situations and often too inflexible to meet certain needs. If essential open space has been protected only by zoning, astronomical increases in its speculative value may generate enough pressure on zoning boards to change the category, as happened last year on upper Rock Creek. This is particularly true in view of metropolitan plans' inevitably hodgepodge nature, ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... difference between a Hottentot and a Newton. The first should no more be condemned to astronomical calculations and discoveries, than the last should be required to follow a plough. Such differences, however, are overlooked by much of the reasoning of the abolitionist. In regard to the question of fact, whether a man is really a man and not a mere thing, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... was outspoken in his praises of Leverrier's important contribution to astronomical science, and was at first inclined to regard it as conclusive; but later, conceiving it to be erroneous, he pronounced against it, and advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way was a detachment or corps of stars which became arrested and held ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the terrace of the tower that the Chinese astronomers had set their instruments, and though few in number they occupied the whole area. But Father Verbiest, the Director of the Observatory, considering them useless for astronomical observation, persuaded the Emperor to let them be removed, to make way for several instruments of his own construction. The instruments set aside by the European astronomers are still in a hall adjoining the tower, buried ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... light of events, some of the many plans suggested are even now of curious interest. The establishment of a magnificent national library at the Capital; the founding of a great university; of a normal school; a post graduate school; and astronomical observatory "equal to any in the world," are a few of the plans from time to time proposed ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... Astronomy teaches us that its power extends across the vast abysses of space, and that stars situated at distances that cannot possibly be measured, are subject to this world-wide law. Some of the greatest discoveries in astronomical science were due to the operations of this wonderful law, the gravitating influences of certain planets indicating their existence, although their discovery had not yet ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... Island, the astronomical instruments were landed, and some important errors, both of latitude and longitude, were discovered and corrected. Thirty or forty whale-ships were seen fastened to the icebergs along the shore of this island. The only four-footed animals observed on it were white hares and a fox: the birds were ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... chapters now appear for the first time. For many of the facts contained in the sketch of the late Professor Adams, I am indebted to the obituary notice written by my friend Dr. J. W. L. Glaisher, for the Royal Astronomical Society; while with regard to the late Sir George Airy, I have a similar acknowledgment to make to Professor H. H. Turner. To my friend Dr. Arthur A. Rambaut I owe my hearty thanks for his kindness in aiding me in ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... next addresses one of the ten reporters in the astronomical department—a department still in the embryonic stage, but which will yet play an important part ...
— In the Year 2889 • Jules Verne and Michel Verne
... simple and exact idea, let us observe the means which those who have studied the heavens have taken to illustrate astronomical facts. There is an astronomical toy called the orrery, which can be made, by proper mechanism, to represent, with tolerable accuracy, the actual motions of the planets in their orbits, and which ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... of study and labor, however, elapsed before he completed the invention of his pendulum,—an invention the importance of which, in the measurement of time and in astronomical calculations, can ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... images or spectra—that is, woodcuts of head and tail pieces—to suit all tastes—from the mouldering cloister of other days to the last balloon ascent. The Notices of Saints' Days and Holidays, Chronology and Biography, Astronomical and Naturalist's Notices, are edited with more than usual industry; and the poetry, original and selected, is for the most part ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... neolithic culture to the vast united realms—vast yet still too small and partial—of the present time." Mr. Wells hoped by changing the time perspective on our present problems to change the moral perspective. Yet the astronomical measure of time, the geological, the biological, any telescopic measure which minimizes the present is not "more true" than a microscopic. Mr. Simeon Strunsky is right when he insists that "if Mr. Wells is thinking of his subtitle, The Probable Future ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... ashore Pennell, Rennick, and I myself took astronomical observations to determine independently the position of the observation spot on the beach at Cape Evans. The preliminary position gave us latitude 77 degrees 38 minutes 23 seconds S. longitude 166 degrees 33 minutes 24 seconds E., a more accurate determination ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... as it would be smashed to pieces in the rough going. One might say in general that dead reckoning on the polar ice is the personal estimate of approximate distance, always checked and corrected from time to time by astronomical observations. ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... Tycho was a Danish noble, born on his ancestral estate at Knudstorp, near Helsinborg, in 1546. Adopted by his uncle, and sent to the University of Copenhagen to study law. Attracted to astronomy by the occurrence of an eclipse on its predicted day, August 21st, 1560. Began to construct astronomical instruments, especially a quadrant and a sextant. Observed at Augsburg and Wittenberg. Studied alchemy, but was recalled to astronomy by the appearance of a new star. Overcame his aristocratic prejudices, and delivered a course of lectures at Copenhagen, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... masses. And, thirdly, while the criticisms on the Bible are in the same vein as those of the earlier deists, Paine is the first to present with force the incongruity of the Christian scheme with the conception of the universe attained by astronomical science. ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... relics of antiquity contained in the museums of Mexico, and scattered about in the archaeological collections of Europe and America. The celebrated calendar stone found buried in the Plaza Mayor of Mexico, and now preserved in that city, demonstrates the astronomical advancement of the Aztecs in an incontrovertible manner, and that monument alone would establish their ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... to the 20th, the western winds continued to blow strong; and finding, after an ineffectual attempt, that it was impossible to make any progress in the voyage, we remained in port, taking astronomical observations, completing the survey, and examining the country, until a favourable change should take place. At the back of the longest beach near Low Head, and on the same side, I found a deep pool of tolerably good water, at which our casks were again replenished; and when the boat was not employed ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... principle coordinates branches, or phases, of geographical study which tend to become specialized and separate. Mathematical or astronomical, physiographic, topographic, political, commercial, geography, all make their claims. How are they to be adjusted? By an external compromise that crowds in so much of each? No other method is to be found unless it be constantly borne in mind that the educational ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... investigation at the Harvard College Observatory, as a memorial to her husband. The results attained are described below, and show that an opportunity is open for a very important and extensive investigation in this branch of astronomical physics. Mrs. Draper has accordingly decided greatly to extend the original plan of work, and to have it conducted on a scale suited to its importance. The attempt will be made to include all portions of the subject, so that the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... Earl of Crawford, who is a Trustee of the British Museum, President of the Camden Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries, and who was formerly President of the Royal Astronomical Society, has printed catalogues of the English broadsides and ballads, and of the Chinese books and manuscripts in his collection, together with hand-lists to the Oriental manuscripts, the early editions of the Greek and Latin writers, and the ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... this time Galileo could not see that the extravagant words of Bruno were largely forced from him by the violence of the opposition he had encountered. Galileo fully believed that Bruno had been put to death for treason to the Church, and not on account of his astronomical teachings. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... shouted "Hard a-starboard. We'll be into a chemist's shop." This momentary infirmity of purpose was the source of much fun among more advanced mariners in his town. Another master who happened to have a leisure evening went to hear a popular astronomical lecture. He was much troubled by what he heard, and he explained his perplexity with great feeling to his friends. He said: "The man told the lot of us that the world turned round and round; but I cannot see how that can ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... gone to Talni from Great Britain to represent the British Astronomical Association, and from the Lick Observatory at San Francisco, succeeded in taking some ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 5, February 3, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... of gravitation, the other objected to that theory that it was subversive of natural religion. The nebular hypothesis—a natural consequence of the theory of gravitation and of the subsequent progress of physical and astronomical discovery—has been denounced as atheistical even down to our own day. But it is now largely adopted by the most theistical natural philosophers as a tenable and perhaps sufficient hypothesis, and where not accepted is no longer objected ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... signalized by an astronomical discovery of great importance, and one which marked the epoch as memorable in the annals of science. A musician at Bath, William Herschel by name, who had been constructing some excellent telescopes and making a systematic survey of the heavens, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... regiment billeted at Olivencia — Curious astronomical conjunction — Lawrence exemplifies the truth of an old proverb at the expense of his hosts, and draws down the wrath of the church on himself — Succeeds more satisfactorily in the case of his comrade — The army shifted to the valley of the Mondego — Lord Wellington's hopes in Almeida and ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... accordingly it is a Greek philosopher named ANAXIMANDER of Miletus, of the sixth century B.C., to whom we owe the invention of map-drawing. Now, in order to make a map of one's own country, little astronomical knowledge is required. As we have seen, savages are able to draw such maps; but when it comes to describing the relative positions of countries divided from one another by seas, the problem is not so easy. An Athenian would know roughly that Byzantium ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... died in 1833), Daguerre (1839), Fox Talbot, an Englishman, J. W. Draper, and other men of science and practical artisans. Instantaneous photography has been of much service in the observation of eclipses and other astronomical phenomena. Progress has also ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... The astronomical day, again, begins at noon AFTER the midnight at which the civil day begins, and hence is a whole day later than the ship's day. This does not enter into Cook's Journal, but one of the logs of the Endeavour, extant, that of Mr. Green ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... In this also consists self-deliverance, self-enfranchisement, self-conquest. All that comes from outside is a question to which we owe an answer—a pressure to be met by counter-pressure, if we are to remain free and living agents. The development of our unconscious nature follows the astronomical laws of Ptolemy; everything in it ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... reason, to put myself under any money obligations to Captain Burton; and, for another reason, I thought I had paid enough for a public cause in the Somali country, without having gained any advantage to myself. Captain Burton, however, knew nothing of astronomical surveying, of physical geography, or of collecting specimens of natural history, so he pressed me again to go with him, and even induced the President of the Royal Geographical Society to say there need ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... side, for completing the great Arc of Parallel from Valencia to the Volga. The Russian portion of the work is far advanced, and will be finished (it is understood) in the coming summer. It appeared to me therefore that the repetition of the measure of astronomical longitude between Greenwich and Valencia could be no longer delayed. Two Assistants of the Royal Observatory (Mr Dunkin and Mr Criswick) will at once proceed to Valencia, for the determination of local ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... The astronomical apparatus at this place is a splendid one; but the models of architecture, fortifications, &c. are only more numerous; not so exact or elegant I think as those the King of England has for his own private use at ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... political achievements Youth of Galileo His early discoveries Genius for mathematics Professor at Pisa Ridicules the old philosophers; invents the thermometer Compared with Kepler Galileo teaches the doctrines of Copernicus Gives offence by his railleries and mockeries Theology and science Astronomical knowledge of the Ancients Utilization of science Construction of the first telescope Galileo's reward His successive discoveries His enemies High scientific rank in Europe Hostility of the Church Galileo summoned before the Inquisition; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... with the officers, numbered nine persons. This work was done at the Karlskrona naval dockyard, under the direction of Captain Palander. At the same time attention was given to the scientific equipment, principally in Stockholm, where a large number of instruments for physical, astronomical, and geological researches was obtained from the Royal Academy ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... a joint resolution of the two Houses of Congress of the 3d of March, 1821, authorizing the President to cause such number of astronomical observations to be made by methods which might, in his judgment, be best adapted to insure a correct determination of the longitude of the Capitol, in the city of Washington, from Greenwich or ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... entered the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris after a brilliant examination, and held the first places throughout the course. In 1806 he was sent to Valencia in Spain, and to the neighboring island of Iviza, to make the astronomical observations for prolonging the arc of the meridian from Dunkirk southward, in order to supply the basis for ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... have observed before upon the windward side of any collection of ice, though it invariably happens, in a remarkable degree, to leeward of it. I may here mention, as a striking proof of the accuracy with which astronomical bearings of objects may be taken for marine surveys, that the relative bearing of Capes Providence and Hay, as obtained this evening when the two headlands were opening, differed only one minute from that entered in the surveying-book, and found in ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... however, also used for any short space of time; according to Lane It is4 minutes (i.e. the 24 hours or 1,440 minutes of the astronomical day divided into 360 degrees of 4 minutes each), and Bocthor gives it as an equivalent ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... I had one of the many opportunities of my life—one which I always enjoyed—of protecting the unfortunate from the stern decree of "justice." The old German custodian came to me one morning in great distress, saying that he had let the "astronomical chronometer" run down, and that the professor would kill him. I went with him to the transit tower, made an observation, and set the chronometer. The professor never knew the difference till I told him, after the ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... astronomical evolutionists, not only this world, but all the other worlds in the universe, existed potentially, as the poet justly remarks, in 'a haze of fluid light,' a vast nebula of enormous extent and almost inconceivable material thinness. The world arose out of a sort of primitive world-gruel. The ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... kind is of them that deal with matter philosophical; either moral, as Tyrtaeus, Phocylides, Cato, or, natural, as Lucretius, Virgil's Georgics; or astronomical, as Manilius {19} and Pontanus; or historical, as Lucan; which who mislike, the fault is in their judgment, quite out of taste, and not in the sweet food of sweetly ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... the method. He made use of an idea which the astronomer Jannsen had applied to the photographing of astronomical processes. Jannsen photographed, for instance, the transit of the planet Venus across the sun in December, 1874, on a circular sensitized plate which revolved in the camera. The plate moved forward ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... noon of the civil day of the same date. It comprises 24 hours, reckoned from O to 24, from noon of one day to noon of the next. Astronomical time, either apparent or mean, is the hour angle of the true or mean sun respectively, measured to the westward throughout its ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... popguns, elastic airbladders, games of hazard, catapults. They comprised astronomical kaleidoscopes exhibiting the twelve constellations of the zodiac from Aries to Pisces, miniature mechanical orreries, arithmetical gelatine lozenges, geometrical to correspond with zoological biscuits, globemap playing balls, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... her meddle with Greek, or Hebrew, or Algebra, or Simony, or Fluxions, or Paradoxes, or such inflammatory branches of learning; nor will it be necessary for her to handle any of your mathematical, astronomical, diabolical instruments; but, Sir Anthony, I would send her, at nine years old, to a boarding-school, in order to learn a little ingenuity and artifice. Then, sir, she should have a supercilious knowledge in accounts; and, as she grew up, I would have her instructed ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... near the point where the north and south fork of the Platte river unite. Lieutenant Fremont wished to explore the south branch, to obtain some astronomical observations, and to determine the mouths of its tributaries as far as St. Vrain's fort. He also hoped to obtain some mules there which he greatly needed. He took with him nine men. The three Cheyenne Indians accompanied ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... animated nature is confined to what we learn by experience on the earth, yet it is a most entertaining, and by no means unedifying, occupation, to seek to apply to the exceedingly diversified conditions prevailing in the other planets, as astronomical observations reveal them to us, the principles, types, and limitations that govern the living creatures of our world, and to judge, as best we can, how far those types and limits may be modified or extended so that those ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... inhabit the Grotto Ernestine, which his brothers fitted up as a very tasteful dwelling. They had even, to gratify their brother, raised on the rock above the grotto a sort of observatory, where the telescope is mounted, to enable him to make his astronomical observations. Yet I perceive his passion for exploring distant planets is less strong, since he has so much to ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... notion so familiar to the Hindoos, that the self-triplicated Great Father yet remained but one in essence, the Peruvians supposed their Tanga-tanga to be one in three, and three in one: and in consequence of the union of hero worship with the astronomical and material systems of idolatry they venerated the sun and the air, each under three images and three names. The same opinions equally prevailed throughout the nations which lie to the west of Hindostan. Thus the Persians had ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... the science which explains to us the RIND of the earth; of what it is made; how it has been made. It tells us nothing of the mass of the earth. That is, properly speaking, an astronomical question. If I may be allowed to liken this earth to a fruit, then astronomy will tell us—when it knows—how the fruit grew, and what is inside the fruit. Geology can only tell us at most how its rind, ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... of pictures. The same may be said of patronage bestowed on learned men, of the publication of archives, of the collecting of libraries, menageries, plants, fossils, antiques, of journeys and voyages for purposes of geographical discovery or astronomical observation. It is not for these ends that Government is constituted. But it may well happen that a Government may have at its command resources which will enable it, without any injury to its main end, to pursue these collateral ends far more effectually than any individual or ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... by himself, with its flourish of trumpets and its general hurrah-boys. But he is unmoved by the apostrophe to the "Evening Star" from the same opera. For this, in passing through the piano-player, is almost reduced to a frigid astronomical basis. The singer is no longer Scotti or Bispham, but Herschel or Laplace. The operator may pump and switch until he breaks his heart—but if he has any real musical instinct, he will surely grow to feel a sense of lack in this sort of music. So ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Their astronomical instruments were of the best, including a portable observatory constructed for sixteen guineas. But most important of all was the careful assortment of provisions, to allay, if possible, that scourge of all navigators, the scurvy. A quantity of malt was shipped to be made into wort, mustard, ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... few hours. Most of the people who came along the road turned down into the kitchen for a few minutes, and the talking was incessant. Once when I went into the window I heard Michael retailing my astronomical lectures from the apex of the gable, but usually their topics have to do with the affairs of ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... writer should, on behalf of the Times newspaper, make an ascent on the right night to secure observations. Moreover, it was arranged that he should have, as chief assistant, his own daughter, an enthusiastic lady aeronaut, who had also taken part in previous astronomical work. ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... by the little swinging needle of the galvanometer. The instrument is so sensitive that with a delicate galvanometer it will show the impingement of the heat from a person's hand thirty feet away. The suggestion to employ such an apparatus in astronomical observations occurs at once, and it may be noted that in one instance the heat of rays of light from the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... in which each mind habitually substitutes signs for images will be, CETERIS PARIBUS, the degree in which it is liable to error. This is not contradicted by the fact that mathematical, astronomical, and physical reasonings may, when complex, be carried on more suecessfully by the employment of signs; because in these cases the signs themselves accurately represent the abstractness of the relations. ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... unmixed than other bodies. There is little doubt that he selected the term in order to mark the identity of the source of motion in the world with that in the animal organism. That again is in accordance with the scientific interests of the time. In his astronomical theories, however, Anaxagoras showed himself a true eastern Ionian, and lagged far behind the Pythagoreans. For him, as for the Ionians of the Aegean down to and including Democritus, the earth was flat, and the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... with the moon for daylight, to help him to rout the foes of God more fiercely? Why not, according to the astronomical ignorance of those days, let her sail away, unconsorted by the sun, far beyond the valley of Ajalon? There was a reason, here, of secret, unobtruded science: if the sun stopped, the moon must stop too; that is to say, both ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... thirty years of age and first lieutenant in the navy, when I was intrusted with an astronomical expedition to Central India. The English Government provided me with all the necessary means for carrying out my enterprise, and I was soon busied with a few followers in that ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... herewith communicate, for the information of Congress, a report of the Secretary of War, with accompanying documents, showing the progress made during the present year in the astronomical observations made under the act of the 14th of July, 1832, relative to the northern boundary of the State ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... learned Rabbis, who had been banished by religious fanaticism, and there to establish a permanent council—a mediaeval Academy of Sciences—which devoted itself to the study of the heavens and the making of astronomical calculations. "This was the first time," says the Spanish historian, "that in barbarous times the Republic of Letters was invited to contemplate a great school of learning,—men occupied through many years in rectifying the old planetary observations, in disputing about ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... expenses would be defrayed. The earliest period at which he could possibly set out was September, and he determined diligently to improve the interval. He chiefly directed his attention to the method of taking astronomical observations, and to the study of the Arabic language. For the latter purpose, he engaged a native of Mogadore, Sidi Omback Boubi, who then resided in London, and had served as the interpreter to Elphi Bey, the Mameluke ambassador from Cairo, to accompany him to Scotland. Park and his ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... next morning, looking at the extraordinary astronomical dials of the parish church, covering much of the surface of the outer walls. All the straight lines, curves, and figures, and the inscriptions in Latin, must have the effect of convincing the majority of the inhabitants that ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Simplicius that Callisthenes, who accompanied Alexander to Babylon, sent to Aristotle from that capital a series of astronomical observations, which he had found preserved there, extending back to a period of 1903 years from Alexander's conquest of the city. Epigenes related that these observations were recorded upon tablets of baked clay, which is ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... eclipses, I have notes upon several of them that did not occur upon scheduled time, though with differences only of seconds—and one delightful lost soul, deep-buried, but buried in the ultra-respectable records of the Royal Astronomical Society, upon an eclipse that did not occur at all. That delightful, ultra-sponsored thing of perdition is too good and malicious to be dismissed with passing notice: ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... quite reach. He was hardly a practical astronomer in the observational sense. His first recorded observation, of an occultation of Aldebaran, was made in 1497, and he is not known to have made as many as fifty astronomical observations, while, of the few he did make and use, at least one was more than half a degree in error, which would have been intolerable to such an observer as Hipparchus. Copernicus in fact seems to have considered ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... to the East, the currents, the trade-winds and monsoons, the harbours, the islands, the shoals, the sunken rocks and dangerous quicksands, and he accompanied his work with various maps and charts, both general and special, of land and water, rarely delineated before his day, as well as by various astronomical and mathematical calculations. Already a countryman of his own, Wagenaar of Zeeland, had laid the mariners of the world under special obligation by a manual which came into such universal use that for centuries afterwards the sailors of England and of other countries called their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... treatises addressed to advanced students contemplated the likelihood of their not being able to do simple division. On the other hand, the study of astronomy necessitated, from its earliest days as a science, considerable skill and accuracy in computation, not only in the calculation of astronomical tables but in their use, aknowledge of which latter was fairly common from the thirteenth to the ...
— The Earliest Arithmetics in English • Anonymous
... and was fortunate enough to have a capable teacher in Dr. William Holder, the husband of a sister, in whose house his father took refuge and died after his ejection from Windsor. At the age of thirteen he was sent for a short period to Westminster, and about the same time invented a new astronomical instrument. The next year he was admitted as a gentleman commoner at Wadham College, Oxford. Both the Warden, Dr. John Wilkins, and the Savilian Professor of Astronomy, Dr. Seth Ward, observed his early promise, and gave ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... necessary magnetic and astronomical observations were now completed I seized the opportunity offered by the first favourable day and started with a party of three in the direction ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... grand prize, Julian Academy, 1889; Temple gold medal, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1889; bronze medal, Paris Exposition, 1889. Member of the Copley Society, Boston; of the Society of Baron Taylor, Paris; and of the Paris Astronomical Society. Born in San Francisco. Pupil of the Julian Academy, under Robert-Fleury, and Jules Lefebvre, where she received, in 1888, the prize of the silver medal and one hundred francs—the highest award given at the annual Portrait Concours, between the men and ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... busy with an astronomical class, explaining, by means partly of the blackboard, partly of two boys representing the relation of the earth and the moon, how it comes that we see but one half of the latter, the door gently opened and the troubled face of the mad laird peeped slowly ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... interplanetary travel, with star ships yet to come. But most scientists wanted it, desperately, for their own ends. There were low-temperature experiments, electronic experiments, weather observations, star-temperature measurements, astronomical observations.... Any man in any field of science could name reasons for it to be built. Even the atom scientists had one, and nearly the best. Their argument was that there were new developments of nuclear theory that needed to be tried out, but should not ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... to settle important questions concerning the calendar; whether or not reports of astronomical observations were then received is not clear, but at any rate the king decided when the intercalary months should be inserted. Thus he told Sin-iddinam there was ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... Tench, records the admiring way in which Laperouse spoke of Cook. He "informed me that every place where he has touched or been near, he found all the astronomical and nautical works of Captain Cook to be very exact and true, and concluded by saying, 'Enfin, Monsieur Cook a tant fait qu'il ne m'a rien laisse a faire que d' admirer ses oeuvres.'" (In short, ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... the ultimatum of your mathematical results; but these beings catch a sight of planets belonging to another system and even reason on the phenomena presented by another sun. Those comets, of which your astronomical history is so imperfect, are to them perfectly familiar, and in their ephemerides their places are shown with as much accurateness as those of Jupiter or Venus in your almanacks; the parallax of the fixed stars nearest them ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... relationship to water, or according to others, to show that the three great attributes of Creator, Destroyer, and Regenerator are combined in him. His loins are enveloped in a tiger's skin. In his character of Time, he not only presides over its extinction, but also its astronomical regulation. A crescent or half-moon on his forehead indicates the measure of time by the phases of the moon; a serpent forms one of his necklaces to denote the measure of time by years, and a second necklace of human skulls marks the lapse and revolution of ages, and the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... monument has been found in the shape of a calendar. It is cut on a square block of marble, upon each side of which three months are registered in perpendicular columns, each headed by the proper sign of the zodiac. The information given may be classed under three heads, astronomical, agricultural, and religious. The first begins with the name of the month; then follows the number of days; then the nones, which in eight months of the year fall on the fifth day, and were thence called quintanae—in the others on the seventh, and were, therefore, called septimanae. The ides are ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... of data which he had derived from the study of the photograph as from plumb line, level, compass, and tape, astronomical triangle, vertices, zenith, pole, and sun, declination, azimuth, solar time, parallactic angles, refraction, and a dozen ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... and sultry Weather in the Neighbourhood of the Equator. Position of the Coast of Brazil. Arrival at the Cape of Good Hope. Transactions there. Junction of the Discovery. Mr Anderson's Journey up the Country. Astronomical Observations. Nautical Remarks on the Passage from England to the Cape, with regard to the Currents and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... selected and implanted by nature in one body for this express purpose, I could have no hesitation in confiding the enterprise to him. To fill up the measure desired, he wanted nothing but a greater familiarity with the technical language of the natural sciences, and readiness in the astronomical observations necessary for the geography of his route. To acquire these he repaired immediately to Philadelphia, and placed himself under the tutorage of the distinguished professors of that place, ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... and trade the comets to Harvard for nebulae, and trade the nebula to the Smithsonian for flint hatchets. I felt obliged to stop this thing on the spot; I said we couldn't have the University turned into an astronomical junk shop. And while I was at it I thought I might as well make the reform complete; the astronomer is extraordinarily mutinous, and so, with your approval, I will transfer him to the law department and put one of the law students in his place. A boy will be more biddable, more tractable, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... to explain. It's this way. I hev a mighty fine plan in my mind founded on a mixin' up of astronomical ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... Of course he, too, bade the sun to stay a while unmoving, and it did. Joshua, the son of Nun, whose astronomical exploit at Gibeon brought him immortal fame, was a glorious warrior; but Haui's unwritten achievements, as chanted by the orero at the marae where Tetuanui, Brooke, and I stood, would have forced the successor of Moses to have withdrawn his book ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... and quite too indistinct to be trustworthy. Should the Earth ever establish communication with us, you will find our histories of interest; for our planet, being smaller, cooled and was peopled ages before yours, and our astronomical records contain minute accounts of the Earth from the time it was a fluid mass. Your geologists and biologists may yet find a mine of ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... or the Chronology of Ancient Egypt discovered from Astronomical and Hieroglyphical Records, including many dates found in coeval inscriptions from the period of the building of the great Pyramid to the times of the Persians, and illustrative of the History of the first Nineteen Dynasties, &c., by Reginald Stuart Poole, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... be called Climatic, the chief influences of which are astronomical position, surface contour, prevalent winds, ocean currents, etc. Climatic zones have their own flora and fauna, and so far as these enter into industry as agricultural and pastoral produce, as raw materials ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... when we were speaking of observatories and astronomical instruments, the Regent asked us if we would allow him to examine the curious, strange-looking machine that we kept in a box. He meant the microscope.... One of us ran home, and returned with the wonderful instrument. While we were putting it together, we attempted to give, as well as we could, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... no mere excuse, but perfectly correct, when I told those people I had an important engagement to attend to. An old friend of mine, Sir Lockesley Halley, was President of the Dedlingtonian Astronomical Society, and, after hearing my account of Mars, said he would be very glad if I could attend the meeting of his Society on the following evening and give a short ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... royal dahabiyeh which this Pharaoh used upon the Nile was three hundred and thirty feet long, and was fitted with state rooms and private rooms of considerable size. Another vessel contained, besides the ordinary cabins, large bath-rooms, a library, and an astronomical observatory. It had eight towers, in which there were machines capable of hurling stones weighing three hundred pounds or more, and arrows eighteen feet in length. These huge vessels were built some two centuries before ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... in the necessaries of life. He who wishes for a grand piano will enter the association of musical instrument makers. And by giving the association part of his half-days' leisure, he will soon possess the piano of his dreams. If he is fond of astronomical studies he will join the association of astronomers, with its philosophers, its observers, its calculators, with its artists in astronomical instruments, its scientists and amateurs, and he will ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... machine, the extraordinary invention of Mr Babbage actually substitutes mechanism in the place of man. A problem is given to the machine, and it solves it by computing a long series of numbers following some given law. In this manner it calculates astronomical, logarithmic, and navigation tables, as well as tables of the powers and products of numbers. It can integrate, too, innumerable equations of finite differences; and, in addition to these functions, it does its work cheaply and ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... who, with me, have never seen any signs of sunshine before noon, and seldom regard the astronomical part of the almanac, will be as much astonished as I was when they hear of his rising so early, and especially when I assure them that he gives light as soon as he rises. I am convinced of this. I am certain of my fact. One cannot be more certain of any fact. I saw it with my own eyes. And, ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... total eclipse of 601, all the other eclipses, so far as days of the moon and month go, are as consistent with each other as are modern Chinese dates with European (Julian) dates. As regards the year, Oppolzer's dates are the "astronomical" dates, that is, the astronomical year—x is the same as the year (x 1) B.C.; or, in other words, the year of Christ's birth is, for certain astronomical exactitude purposes, interpolated between the years 1 B.C. and ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... another Jacob's dream. Since that time, the heavens have gone farther off, and grown astronomical. They have become averse to the imagination, nor will they return to us on the squares of the distances, or on Doctor Chalmers's Discourses. Rembrandt's picture brings the matter nearer to us.—It is not only the progress of mechanical knowledge, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... summer was carried over into October, and even November, to keep the days warm and full of sunlight, while the nights were clear and frosty, and always over this boundless prairie the far scattered stars. I had bought an astronomical chart and located the constellations, in which Zoe had joined me in increasing wonder. Then I had a taste of real hunting. Reverdy and I had gone to marshes a few miles away for wild geese and ducks; and we had come back loaded with game ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... be a novel observatory, quite free from atmospheric troubles. They might be able to make some astronomical discoveries." ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... time at which Queen Tera intended her resurrection to take place! We are in contact with some of the higher astronomical calculations in connection with true orientation. As you know, the stars shift their relative positions in the heavens; but though the real distances traversed are beyond all ordinary comprehension, the effects as we see them are small. Nevertheless, they are susceptible ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... frontier line from Kohat to Bannu, including a wide strip of trans-frontier country, and much of the hitherto unmapped Tochi Valley. On the break-up of the Kohat Survey he was temporarily employed on geodetic work in one of the Astronomical parties, but was re-transferred to the frontier when the Baluchistan parties were formed. His chief work in connection with Baluchistan has been carrying a first-class series of triangles from the Indus, at Dehra Grhazi Khan to Quetta, which occupied him to the close of his career. His ability ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... a miner's hut, though displaying great originality of design, and ingenious artistic effects, becomes after a time rather a tiresome object of contemplation. The colonel found it so, and he relieved his strained eyes by an occasional amateur astronomical observation. On turning his head, with a yawn, from one of these, he saw inside the hut a state of affairs which caused him to feel hurriedly ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... his confidence began to fail. Supposing he had been wrong? They knew the rock had passed very close to Roger Hunter's asteroid, the astronomical records proved that. But suppose Dad had not used it as his hiding place at all? He pulled himself around another jagged rock shelf, staring down at the ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... actual existence than any of its unborn brethren, since I have yet a great store of notes and memoranda gathered for its construction in earlier years. My other works, such as the great treatise on Astronomical Delusions—which Herschel and La Place afterward rendered unnecessary—and the "History of the Dutch in America," never even progressed to this point of preparation. I mention this to show that I resist a genuine temptation now in deciding not ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... we may mention that by its means a screw five feet in length, and two inches in diameter, was cut with fifty threads to the inch; the nut to fit on to it being twelve inches long, and containing six hundred threads. This screw was principally used for dividing scales for astronomical purposes; and by its means divisions were produced so minute that they could not be detected without the aid of a magnifier. The screw, which was sent for exhibition to the Society of Arts, is still ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... have insured it the warmest admiration of contemporary mathematicians and the most welcome reception in all the schools of philosophy throughout Europe. This, however, is not the way in which great truths are generally received. Though the astronomical discoveries of Newton were not assailed by the class of ignorant pretenders who attacked his optical writings, yet they were everywhere resisted by the errors and prejudices which had taken a deep hold ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Moses are only miserable ghosts driven mad by love of matter. Certainly everything is possible, as Professor Flournoy says, but this theory is somewhat astonishing, for it seems to make the inhabitants of the next world gravitate round our miserable earth, and is like the old astronomical theory that placed our little globe in the centre of the universe. If there be another world, it is hard to believe that its inhabitants spend the greater part of their time in attending to us, some of them to harm us and the rest to do ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... gardens both zoological and botanical; their markets, attended by merchants from the surrounding countries; their beautiful cloth and feather work, the latter now a lost art; their picture writing; their cunning artificers in gold and silver; their astronomical knowledge; their schools; their love of order, of cleanliness, of decency; their morality and wonderful patriotism, without feeling that the conquest of Mexico was a deplorable calamity; that if that ancient civilisation had been saved it might have been Christianised and purified ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... Physics in the Stevens Institute of Technology; Member of the National Academy of Sciences; of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston; of the New York Academy of Sciences; of the German Astronomical Society; of the American Otological Society; and Honorary Member of ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... results obtained at a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society held especially for that purpose recently in London, it was the general opinion that Einstein's prediction might be regarded as justified, and warm tributes to his genius were made on all sides. Nevertheless, I cannot refrain, while I am mentioning it, from expressing my surprise that, according ...
— The Einstein Theory of Relativity • H.A. Lorentz
... solution of this fable, analogous to the preceding. According to Pliny, Prometheus was the first who instituted sacrifices. Being expelled his dominions by Jupiter, he fled to Scythia, where he retired to Mount Caucasus, either to make astronomical calculations or to indulge his melancholy for the loss of his dominions, which occasioned the fable of the vulture or eagle feeding on his liver. As he was the first inventor of forging metals by fire, he was said to have stolen that element from heaven; and, as the first introduction ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... represented by a lawyer straight out of a B-grade gangster picture. Rand had a heated argument with an over-zealous Justice of the Peace, who wanted to impound the pistols and jackknife-mark them for identification, but after hurling bloodthirsty threats of a damage suit for an astronomical figure, he managed to retain possession of the ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... and Ventilating the Ships—Masquerades adopted as an Amusement to the Men—Establishment of Schools—Astronomical ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... of 1867. The work intrusted to the commissioner and the officers of the Army attached to the commission has been well and satisfactorily performed. The original of the final agreement of the commissioners, signed upon the 29th of May, 1876, with the original official "lists of astronomical stations observed," the original official "list of monuments marking the international boundary line," and the maps, records, and general reports relating to the commission, have been deposited in the Department ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... without which the grandest plantation is a vacancy, and another interest, too, arises from watching the progress of their growth and the advance of the season. Our own trees and shrubs literally keep pace with the stars which shine in our northern skies. An astronomical floral almanack might almost be constructed, showing how, as the constellations marched on by night, the buds and leaves and ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... of the work, "Bobs, man! this won't do, we must have at it again;" and then the whole of that was put aside, and a new instrument, begun. By means of such perseverance, he succeeded in bringing various mathematical, philosophical, and astronomical instruments to perfection. The large theodolite for terrestrial measurements, and the equal altitude instrument for astronomy, will always be monuments of his fertile, penetrating, arduous, superior genius! There cannot be a lover ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... instrument is in use, the thermograph, that utilizes the heat rays from the sun, instead of the light. It takes pictures by heat; in other words, it sees in the dark; brings invisible things to the eye of man, and is used in astronomical and physical researches wherein undulations and radiations are concerned. And now comes the magnetometer, to measure the amount of magnetism that reaches the earth from the sun. It points to zero when the magnetic forces of the earth are in equilibrium, but let a magnetic storm ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... has been seen to oppose itself to "Natural Selection," by limiting, on astronomical and physical grounds, the duration of life on this planet to about one hundred million years. This period, it has been contended, is not nearly enough on the one hand for the evolution of all organic forms by the exclusive action of mere minute, fortuitous ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... Adams recommended the establishment of a national observatory. "Connected with the establishment of an university," he said "or, separate from it, might be undertaken the erection of an astronomical observatory, with provision for the support of an astronomer, to be in constant attendance of observation upon the phenomena of the heavens, and for the periodical publication of his observations. It is with no feeling of ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... finding ordinary methods of surveying impracticable in the dense forest which covers the whole region, I adopted this simple and apparently rude method, checking the distances whenever possible by astronomical observation. ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... cyclopaedia, and jest-book; was even a spelling-book. It was consulted by every member of the household on every subject, save possibly religion—for that they had the best of all books. The planters learned from it meteorological, astronomical, thaumaturgical, botanical, and agricultural facts—or rather what the editor stated as facts. Social customs and peculiarities and ethics were also touched upon in a manner suited to the requirements and capacity of the reader; medical and hygienic ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... confuse what we like doing with what is 'really' right. Mr. Russell, in some of his later writings, seems to incline to views of this sort. But the suggestion is really unmotived. It would be just as reasonable to suggest that all geometrical or astronomical propositions are only expressions of the personal and private feelings of geometers and astronomers, and that either there is no distinction between truths and falsehoods in geometry and astronomy, or that, at any rate, we do not know which the true propositions ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... interest to procure books of astronomy and of mathematicks, and made such a progress in three or four months, that he seemed to have spent his whole life upon that study; for he not only made an astrolabe, and drew up astronomical tables, but invented new methods of calculation, or such at least as appeared new to him, because they were not mentioned in the books which he had then an opportunity of reading; and it is a sufficient proof, both of the rapidity of his progress, and the extent of his views, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... study of the movements of the heavenly bodies. The calendar, which they were the first to frame, was thus not only or even primarily a work of practical utility but of religious meaning and obligation. The priests had to fix in advance the feast days of gods and kings by astronomical prediction. Their standards and their means of measurement were rough approximations. Thus the 360 degrees into which the Babylonians taught us to divide the circle are thought to have been the nearest round number to the days of the year. ...
— Progress and History • Various
... filled instantly with water, swamped, and thrown back against the rocks "almost a perfect wreck, and its contents were washed down below the overhanging rocks." A package of Wheeler's valuable papers was lost, also a lot of expensive instruments, the astronomical and meteorological observations, and the entire cargo of rations. This was a discouraging disaster, and came near compelling the retreat of the whole party. Darkness came on, and they were obliged to drop back about half a mile to make a camp. Wheeler was weary and dispirited, though he maintained ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... of the skies and the ceaseless motions of the planets, have set up some system of the heavens, in which the sense of wonder and the desire for knowledge were no less concerned than the practical necessities of life. The measurement of time and the needs of navigation have always stimulated astronomical research, but the intellectual demand has been keen from the first. Hipparchus and the Greek astronomers of the Alexandrian school, shaking off the vagaries of magic and divination, placed astronomy on a scientific basis, though the reaction of the Middle Ages ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... kindred things by dissection and in embryology—I had checked the whole theory of development again in a year's course of palaeontology, and I had taken the dimensions of the whole process, by the scale of the stars, in a course of astronomical physics. And all that amount of objective elucidation came before I had reached the beginnings of any philosophical or metaphysical inquiry, any inquiry as to why I believed, how I believed, what I believed, or what the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Generation To the Muse The Learned Workman The Duty of All A Problem The Peculiar Ideal To Mystics The Key The Observer Wisdom and Prudence The Agreement Political Precept Majestas Populi The Difficult Union To a World-Reformer My Antipathy Astronomical Writings The Best State To Astronomers My Faith Inside and Outside Friend and Foe Light and Color Genius Beauteous Individuality Variety The imitator Geniality The Inquirers Correctness The Three Ages of Nature ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... observations of the sun and moon, the mean result of them gave 180 deg. 47' W. longitude; but, as all the observations made before exceeded these, I have laid down the coast from the mean of the whole. At noon, I took the sun's meridian altitude with an astronomical quadrant, which was set up at the watering-place, and found the latitude to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... amazing, although like many of his class, he had to battle against the envy of rivals. After completely planning his expedition, he made a dash for the Arctic Sea, by way of Mackenzie River, which he—first of white men—descended, and which bears his name. Finding his astronomical knowledge defective, he took a year off, and in his native land learned the use of the instruments needed in exploration. After his return he ascended the Peace River, crossed the Rocky Mountains, and on a rock on the shore of the Pacific Ocean in British Columbia, ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... most amiable and clear-headed of such foreign guests was Francis Baily, later in life president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Great Britain, but at the time of his American tour a young man of twenty-two. His journey in 1796-97 gave him a wide experience of stage, flatboat, and pack-horse travel, and his genial disposition, his observant eye, and his discriminating criticism, together ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert |
