"Focal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... throng the stream of consciousness like so many pieces of wood following each other at random down a rushing current, now this one ahead, now that. On the contrary, our thoughts come, one after the other, as they are beckoned or caused. The thought now in the focal point of your consciousness appeared because it sprouted out of the one just preceding it; and the present thought, before it departs, will determine its successor and lead it upon the scene. This is to say that our thought stream possesses not ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... my father was made with 5x7 Graphic camera and a Standard Orthonon plate, using a Busch Omnar F 4.5 of ten-inch focal length, at full opening. A hazy day in the country, the ground covered with snow, a south window shaded by a veranda and my father seated in front of the window about four or five feet from it, ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1921 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... of all the people. No event in the civil history of the country had ever before occurred to so arouse public antipathies and public indignation against any man-and these conditions found special vent in the City of Washington, as the Capitol of the Nation, as it had become during the trial the focal point of the politically dissatisfied element of the entire country. Its streets and all its places of gathering had swarmed for many weeks with representatives of every State of the Union, demanding in a practically united voice the deposition ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... identify the very spot on which the telescope stood which was used in this memorable research. It was erected at the house then occupied by Molyneux, on the western extremity of Kew Green. The focal length was 24 feet 3 inches, and the eye-glass was 3 and a half feet above the ground floor. The instrument was first set up on November 26th, 1725. If there had be any appreciable disturbance in the place of Beta Draconis ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... the distortions of a mob orator, with his extravagant promises, the masses become merely a driven crowd eager for gain, not human souls. They are the concave reflector of passions and greeds that rage in the focal point of the speaker's rostrum; they return in concentrated form the rays that dazzle them. He who puts the masses in the judgment-seat, who looks for counsel and decision at their hands, has neither reverence nor love for man. Sooner or later the truth of this will ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... himself to be material sub- 301:24 stance, while man is "image" (idea). Delusion, sin, dis- ease, and death arise from the false testimony of material sense, which, from a supposed standpoint outside the 301:27 focal distance of infinite Spirit, presents an inverted image of Mind and substance with everything ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... will be seen to be a classification according to time and space, for the characteristic of time is succession, and of space, simultaneousness: the first is expressed symbolically by elements arranged with relation to axial lines; the second, by elements arranged with relation to focal points ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... and the sense of evil. You will awake to the perception of God as All-in-all. You will find yourself losing the knowledge and the operation of sin, proportionably as you realize the divine infinitude and believe that He can see nothing outside of His own focal distance. ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... development of walk lines of practical use, recognizing both traffic requirements and the desirability of location for numerous park benches. What will lend more charm to a park than a beautiful drive bordered with noble trees leading up to some focal point or opening a way to some particular vista that ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... by a single course of action such as "to escort trade in convoys" or "to patrol the trade routes". Both of these courses of action might be necessary, and, in addition, perhaps, the further course "to cover focal points M ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... monotonous intonations of the therapist that cause the subject to lapse from the deeply relaxed state into true sleep. I have observed many times, by comparing verbalization with silence, that the former gives the subject's mind a focal point of attention which prevents him from entering a sleep state where hypnotherapy is impossible. Like the man who cannot sleep because of an active mind, sleep and myriad thoughts and suggestions are incompatible, and I believe, once a hypnotic ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... that slightly sing-song cadence which is observed to be common in poets reading their own verses—the following stanzas; holding them at a focal distance of about two feet and a half, with an occasional movement back or forward for better adjustment, the appearance of which has been likened by some impertinent young folks to that of the act of playing on the trombone. His ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the whole program would be "troublesome and require tact, patience, and tolerance" on the part of those in charge. But, he added, "we have so many difficulties to surmount anyhow that one more possibly wouldn't swell the total very much." Foreseeing that segregation would become the focal point of black protest, he argued that the Navy had to begin accepting Negroes somewhere, and it might as well begin with a ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... back to ATIC, and the next day Colonel Don Bower and I left for the west coast to talk to some people about how to get better UFO data. We brought back the idea of using an extremely long focal-length camera equipped ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... o'clock M. Leverrier asked me to go into the observatory, which connects with the dwelling. They are building immense additional rooms, and are having a great telescope, twenty-seven feet in focal length, constructed. ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... been seen that the glass placed at the observer's eye produces the magnifying power, and the object-glass which bears this power the best is the one that has the largest diameter and the greatest focal distance. In order to magnify 48,000 times it must be much larger than those of Herschel and Lord Rosse. There lay the difficulty, for the casting of these mirrors ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... buoyancy &c.; metacenter[obs3]. V. be central &c. adj.; converge &c. 290. render central, centralize, concentrate; bring to a focus. Adj. central, centrical[obs3]; middle &c. 68; azygous, axial, focal, umbilical, concentric; middlemost; rachidian[obs3]; spinal, vertebral. Adv. middle; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... year you didn't see—oh, how foolish you are!" she cried, and touched Johnny with her spur. His response brought him near the phaeton, which seemed a focal ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... another sort of variation, some feeling connected with your own body may have passed from a marginal to a focal place, even ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... see is certain variations of apparent size, and degrees of faintness of color; that our estimate of the object's distance from us is the result partly of a rapid inference from the muscular sensations accompanying the adjustment of the focal distance of the eye to objects unequally remote from us, and partly of a comparison (made with so much rapidity that we are unconscious of making it) between the size and color of the object as they appear at the time, and the size and color ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... 2. An astronomical clock, made by Mr Shelton. 3. An assistant clock, made by Mr Monk. 4. A transit instrument, made by Mr Bird. 5. An astronomical quadrant, by the same excellent artist. 6. A reflecting telescope, of two feet focal length, by ditto. 7. An achromatic refracting telescope, of three and a half feet, and triple object glass, made by Mr Dollond. 8. A Hadley's sextant, by ditto. 9. Another, by Mr Ramsden. 10. An azimuth compass, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... it while quite warm, the drying being completed finally by the action of the pump itself. All the measurements were made by a fine cathetometer which was constructed for me by William Grunow; see this Journal, Jan., 1874, p. 23. It was provided with a well-corrected object-glass having a focal length of 200 mm. and as used by me gave a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... the troubled waters of family friction and delicate adjustments, this adventurous pair had slid into a haven of peace and mutual understanding. And now behold, fresh portent of trouble arising from the dual strain in Roy—the focal point of ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... XIV was thus the focal point of French—almost of European—life, the professional and mercantile classes, who constituted the Third Estate, enjoyed comparative security and prosperity and under the king held all of the important offices of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... religion comes down; it does not rise up. It is not the wilderness, nor the low lands, nor the level places, but Mount Carmel, Mount Horeb, Mount Zion, the Mount of the Beatitudes and the Mount of Transfiguration that are focal points of righteousness and faith. And when you look at and reflect upon men—the great men, the men who have moulded the world, who have made the massive contributions to humanity, who have dealt the Titan strokes ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... Rod was actually a giant balloon eight thousand feet in diameter, one-half "silvered" with a greenish reflective surface inside that reflected only that light that could be utilized by the ruby rods at its long focal center; and that absorbed the remainder of the incident solar radiation, dumping it through to its black outside surface, and on into the vastness of space. This half of the big balloon was the spherical collector mirror, facing, through the clear plastic of its other ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... ingredients in a work of this kind, I trust merely to the zeal and liberality of my friends to supply me with them. I have them not myself, but doubt not of the good offices of those who possess them, and shall think myself entitled to no small praise if I am able to collect into one focal spot the rays of a great number of luminaries. They also may be very unequal to each other in lustre, and some of them may be little better than twinkling and feeble stars of the hundredth magnitude; but what is wanting in individual ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... was a very old man, and for years his focal point had been moving off gradually, until now his chief pleasures of sight were to be found out-of-doors, where the distant views came gratefully ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... now take special notice of that word heard so often in photographic talk—"focus." What is meant by the focus or focal length of a lens? Well, it merely signifies the distance between the optical centre of the lens and the plane in which ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... selectest body known to chivalry, the Knights of the Table Round, the most illustrious in Christendom; and biggest fact of all, the very sun of their shining system was yonder couching his lance, the focal point of forty thousand adoring eyes; and all by myself, here was I laying for him. Across my mind flitted the dear image of a certain hello-girl of West Hartford, and I wished she could see me now. In that moment, down came the Invincible, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... plain, from the elevated central point of view where we now stand, and in the focal light in which we now see, that no man can be justified before God upon the ground of personal character; for that character, when subjected to God's exhaustive scrutiny, withers and shrinks away. A man may possibly be just before his neighbor, or his friend, or society, or human laws, ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... church vestrymen, from the ranks of successful business and professional men. It is necessary for the educator, the journalist, and the minister to work through these men in order to secure the "sinews of war." They are at the focal points of power because they control the ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... degrees. Within this angle is included a large portion of the light emitted by the light-source in the case of direct-current arcs. If this angle is increased for a mirror of a given diameter by decreasing its focal length, the divergence of the beam is increased and the beam-intensity is diminished. This is due to the fact that the light-source now becomes apparently larger; that is, being of a given size it now subtends a larger ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... us. In a real view our eyes are directed successively at every object, which we then see clearly and with distinct outlines, everything else—nearer and farther—being indistinct; but being able to change the focal angle of our two eyes and their angle of direction with great rapidity, we are enabled to glance rapidly at each object in succession and thus obtain a general and detailed view of the whole. A house, a tree, a spire, the leaves of a shrub in the foreground, are each seen (while ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... the mutual liking which able men experience for each other when neither is animated by the desire for personal gain. In truth, the attraction was understandable. The bishop responded easily to his guest's magnetic presence, and perceived in him the focal power that energized each one of his successive undertakings, while to Clark came the strength and benignity of the bishop's high and blameless spirit. They were doing each other good, and ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... universe in themselves. The horse's body filled the upper part of the picture; the legs, the great hoofs, frozen to stillness in the midst of their trampling, limited it on either side. And beneath lay the man, his foreshortened face at the focal point in the centre, his arms outstretched towards the sides of the picture. Under the arch of the horse's belly, between his legs, the eye looked through into an intense darkness; below, the space was closed ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... cases of delinquents with more or less marked psychopathic signs in which pathological lying was the focal point. He reports five cases at great length, in all of whom the inclination to fabricate stories, "der Hang zum fabulieren,'' is irresistible and apparently not to be repressed by efforts of the will. Risch's main points, built up from study of his cases, are worthy of close consideration: 1. ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... pathognomonic sign (e.g. plasma cells) of general paresis. They all showed in common very marked lesions of the cortex, including the frontal regions (in two instances the extent of the frontal lesions was presaged by focal overlying pial changes) .999 was a case of pseudoleukemia with marked cortical devastation but without brain foci of lymphoid cells. Two of the cases showed cell-losses more marked in suprastellate layers; in the third there was universal ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... gashed form of the Lord of Glory; men and devils glutting their malice in the agony of the Prince of Life; and all the scattered rays of vengeance which would have consumed our guilty race, converging and beating in focal intensity upon Him of whom the Eternal twice exclaimed, in a voice from heaven, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." After this, what are our emotions? Can we ever be cold or faithless? No, my brethren, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... (Liverpool). A meniscus lens of the diameter of four inches should have a focal length of twenty inches, and will produce perfect landscape pictures fourteen inches square. It is said they will cover fifteen inches; but fourteen they do with great definition. We strongly advise W. L. to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... circle was made by the direction, and at the expense of the Board of Longitude, for the purpose of exemplifying the principle of repetition when applied to a circle of so small a diameter as six inches, carrying a telescope of seven inches focal length, and one inch aperture; and of practically ascertaining the degree of accuracy which might be retained, whilst the portability of the instrument should be increased, by a reduction in the size to half the amount which had been ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... special interests, deprive the individual of the motives and means for self-isolation, suppress preoccupations and ambitions by which Man makes himself a focal point at the expense of the real center, in short, to detach him from himself in order to attach him ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... road. The telephone wires, cut by shell fragments, fell in stiff, draping lines to the ground. Every once in a while a shell would fall into the river, causing a silvery gray geyser to hang for an instant above the green eddies of the Meuse. A certain village along this highway was the focal point of the firing. Many of the houses had been blown to pieces, and fragments of red tile, bits of shiny glass, and lumps of masonry were strewn all over ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... its symbolical commentary here in this arid and light-splashed plain of Madaura. Like it, the thought of Augustin has no shadows. Like it too, it is lightened by strange and splendid tints which seem to come from far off, from a focal fire invisible to human eyes. No modern writer has better praised the light—not only the immortal light of the blessed, but that light which rests on the African fields, and is on land and sea; and nobody has spoken of it with more amplitude and wonder. The ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... must perforce be present. One cannot exist without the other. According to most psychologists, the term attention is used to describe the form consciousness takes, to refer to the fact that consciousness is selective. It simply means that consciousness is always focal and marginal—that some ideas, facts, or feelings stand out in greater prominence than do others, and that the presence of this "perspective" in consciousness is a matter of mechanical adjustment. James describes consciousness by likening it to a series of waves, each having a crest and sides which ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... as is universally thought, to chemical combustion, but to vital replenishment. No energy is created within the body; it is merely transmitted. The body, in fact, acts as a means of transmission—as a sort of "organic burning glass" which transmits and focuses the sun's rays on one focal point. And just as any crack, or blur, or clouding, or other accident to the burning glass would interfere with its power and capacity from transmitting the rays, so, any accident or disease or ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... observations on this portion of the heavens, using a Newtonian reflector of twenty feet focal length, and an aperture of eighteen inches. With this powerful telescope he completely resolved the whitish appearance into stars, which the telescopes he had formerly used had not light enough to do. In the most vacant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... Second-hand Achromatic Portrait Lens by Lerebour, 2-1/4 aperture, 7 inches focal length. ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... Toward a focal point: from the east, two people; from the north, two people. If in the efficient self-assurance of Adam Hennessey could be paralleled a variant harmony with the insistent surfaceness of S. Nuwell Eli, does any coincidental parallelism exist between Brute Hennessey ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... studied for its decorative quality as a part of a larger scheme. Viewed from below, this procession of figures must be exceedingly effective. The emphasis of lines is diagonal, flowing in the direction of the focal point of ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... behind the eye!' To which query we may venture to answer in the negative. For in the present case the rule for determining the distance of the distinct base, or respective focus from the glass, is this: as the difference between the distance of the object and focus is to the focus or focal length, so the distance of the object from the glass is to the distance of the respective focus or distinct base from the glass. [Molyneux Dioptr., Par. I. Prop. 5.] Let us now suppose the object to be placed at the distance of the focal length, and one half ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... discoverer of the cissoid which was used for duplicating the cube. He also wrote a book περι πυρειων {peri pyreiôn}, On burning-mirrors, which probably discussed, among other forms of mirror, surfaces of parabolic or elliptic section, and used the focal properties of the two conics; it was in this work that Diocles gave an independent and clever solution (by means of an ellipse and a rectangular hyperbola) of Archimedes's problem of cutting a sphere into two segments in a given ratio. Dionysodorus ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... lines bisected the outer concentric circles like the radii of an orb spider's web. In the center of the web was the smallest circle. Within the circle was the focal point of all flying ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... absorbed and busy, and has regard for sun and stars and a melancholy frowning concentration upon the foot of cliffs, it is never face to face with man: he can never come within the focus of its great glancing vision. It is somewhere beyond time and space that the mighty perspective of those focal rays comes to its point; and they are so wide and eternal in their sweep that we should find their end, could we but trace them, in a condition far different from that in which our finite views ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... only one answer: The race that built the City did so for the same reason that human beings built such megalopolises as New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and London—because it was a focal point for important trade routes. Only such trade routes could support such a city; only such trade routes give reason for the ...
— Dead Giveaway • Gordon Randall Garrett
... these matters without going into a complete optical discussion. The radii of curvature of the surfaces, beginning with the first, i.e. the external face of the convex lens, are in the ratio of 1, 2, and 3; an allowance of 15 inches focal length per inch of aperture is reasonable (see Optics in Ency. Brit.), and the focal length is the same as the greatest radius of curvature. Thus, for an object glass 2 inches in diameter, the first surface of the convex lens would have a radius of curvature of 10 inches, the surface common ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... were also peculiarly favourable for the composition of such a poem. He was at the proper focal distance to appreciate the full interest of the Crusades, not too near to be absorbed in observation and engrossed in the immediate results; not too far off to lose the sympathy for the religious chivalry which inspired ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... eminent workers, the Clarks of Cambridge, use a modification of the Rosse method which in their hands is productive of the very highest results. The device is very simple, consisting of a telescope (a, Fig. 1) in which aberrations have been well corrected, so that the focal plane of the objective is as sharp as possible. This telescope is first directed to a distant object, preferably a celestial one, and focused for parallel rays. The surface, b, to be tested is now placed so that the reflected image ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... your letter says. Yes; love requires the focal space Of recollection or of hope, E'er it can measure its own scope. Too soon, too soon comes Death to show We love more deeply than we know! The rain, that fell upon the height Too gently to be call'd delight, Within the dark vale reappears As a wild cataract ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... (N. A.).—The numerical aperture may be defined, in general terms, as the ratio of the effective diameter of the back lens of the objective to its equivalent focal length. The determination of this point is a process requiring considerable technical skill and mathematical ability, and is completely beyond the powers ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... correct. In a shaded map representative of the intelligence of Scotland, I would be disposed—sinking the lapsed classes, or representing them merely by a few such dark spots as mottle the sun—to represent the large towns as centres of focal brightness; but each of these focal centres I would encircle with a halo of darkness considerably deeper in shade than the medium spaces beyond. I found that in the tenebrious halo of the Scottish capital there existed, independently of the ignorance of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... need, one of the major focal points of our concern is the South Asian region. Here, in two nations alone, are almost five hundred million people, all working, and working hard, to raise their standards, and in doing so, to make of themselves a strong bulwark against the spread of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... this way. The well-known telescopist Goldschmidt (who commenced astronomical observation at the age of forty-eight, in 1850) added fourteen asteroids to the solar system, not to speak of important discoveries of nebulae and variable stars, by means of a telescope only five feet in focal length, mounted ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... kind can be used in several different ways. The 100-inch mirror has a focal length of about 42 feet, and in one of the arrangements of the instrument, the photographic plate is mounted at the centre of the telescope tube near its upper end, where it receives directly the image formed by the large ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... Hope. Lord Rosse was born in the year 1800. Under his auspices the reflecting telescope reached its maximum of power and usefulness. His great reflector, built in his own grounds at Birr Castle, Ireland, was finished in 1844. This instrument was the marvel of that epoch. It had a focal distance of fifty-three feet, and an aperture of six feet. With this great telescope its master reached out into the region of the nebulae, and began the real work ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... of the focal and foremost fire, Out of the hospital walls as dire; Smitten of grape-shot and gangrene, (Eighteenth battle and he sixteen!) Specter! such as you seldom see, ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... now fighting on the Somme with the English," wrote a man of the 17th Bavarian Regiment. "You can no longer call it war. It is mere murder. We are at the focal-point of the present battle in Foureaux Wood (near Guillemont). All my previous experiences in this war—the slaughter at Ypres and the battle in the gravel-pit at Hulluch—are the purest child's play compared with this massacre, and that is much too mild a description. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... good art should find a place in public buildings where large numbers of persons might find easy access to it. The proximity of the proposed new structure to historic Independence Hall and the adjacent buildings would make it a focal point for visitors from all parts of the country and the world. The opportunity presented itself to put good art, within the comprehension of a large public, into the new building, and Bok asked permission of Mr. Curtis to introduce a strong ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... areas of loops and whorls are enclosed the focal points which are used to classify them. These points are called ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... gave Mr Peacock a paper on the alteration of the focal length of a telescope as directed with or against the Earth's orbital motion (on the theory of emissions) which was written out for reading to the Cambridge Philosophical Society on Feb. 24th and 25th. [This ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... the focal flames aspire, The mute beholders tremble and retire, Gaze on the miracle, full credence own, And vow obedience ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... feelings or natural impulses, rising, like a breath of wind under some motion of nature, and again dying away, because not made the subject of artificial review and interpretation, are now brought powerfully under the focal light of the consciousness: and whatsoever is once made the subject of consciousness, can never again have the privilege of gay, careless thoughtlessness—the privilege by which the mind, like the lamps of a mail-coach, moving rapidly through the midnight woods, illuminate, for one ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... upper class and for their benefit and solace, money had to be paid to them. Apart from rent for house or land, there were payments due to them proceeding from the time, the obscure and distant time, when power went with land, and the focal landholder was the local government, the ruler and protector of the people, and was paid accordingly. And there was another category of claims, proceeding indirectly from the same historic source, consisting of commutation ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... it follows that a small picture, being viewed at its proper focal distance, reflects the same sized image as a larger one at its proper focal distance, I can see no good reason why the physical attribute of largeness should be so eagerly sought for by the public. Surely a gallery of small pictures, provided they be not painfully small, should be preferred ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... flying column of bagmen and negotiators to India and the Straits Settlements, and distributing a numerical division of business agents throughout China. The Empire of the Celestials was made the focal point of a great propaganda, ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... Direction of Shade. Perspectives. The Most Pronounced Lines. Direction of Light. Scale Drawings. Degree, and What it Means. Memorizing Angles. Section Lining. Making Ellipses and Irregular Curves. Focal Points. Isometric and Perspective. The Protractor. Suggestions in Drawing. Holding the Pen. Inks. Tracing Cloth. Detail Paper. How to Proceed. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... is, that infinitely more is involved than the capture of a French town, or even the destruction of a French Army; it is a question of stamina; it is the climax of the world war, the focal point of the colossal struggle between the Latin and the Teuton, and on the battlefields of Verdun the gods will decide the ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... wave-length. This method is especially used with a so-called objective-grating, which consists of a series of metallic threads, stretched parallel to each other at equal intervals. On account of the diffraction of the light we now get in the focal plane of the objective, with the use of these gratings, not only a fainter image of the star at the place where it would have arisen without grating, but also at both sides of this image secondary images, the distances of which from the central star are certain theoretically ...
— Lectures on Stellar Statistics • Carl Vilhelm Ludvig Charlier
... that if an individual deviates at all from the path which the laws (or, directrix) indicate, if he does not show true respect to the decrees of the focal government, and preserve the true position between them, directly he is found deviating from his course, he is quickly banished to a less enlightened sphere. In an ellipse there is less likelihood of his straying away from the course which the directrix points out, on account of the two-fold guidance ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... general belief in a universe of matter without and about us. As a plain statement of fact, there is no such thing. But, I ask again, Is the mind within the brain, waiting for vibrations that will give it information concerning the external world? Or does the mind, from some focal point without the brain, look first at these vibrations, and then translate them into terms of things without? Do these vibrations in some way suggest form and color and substance to the waiting mind? Does the mind first look at vibrating nerve-points, and ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... of from one to twenty-five times, with lenses varying in focal length from three to nine inches ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant
... produced by Messrs. Alvan Clark, of Cambridgeport, Boston, Mass. One of their most famous telescopes is the great Lick Refractor now in use on Mount Hamilton in California. The diameter of this object-glass is thirty-six inches, and its focal length is fifty-six feet two inches. A still greater effort has recently been made by the same firm in the refractor of forty inches aperture for the Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago. ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... required to what we can no more get rid of than we can go out of ourselves. We are creatures of prejudice; we neither can nor ought to eradicate it; we must only regulate, it by reason, which regulation by reason is, indeed, little more than obliging the lesser, the focal and temporary prejudices, to give way to those which ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... merely a large collector of moonlight, which was thrown after collection onto a lunium plate. The resultant emanations were turned into a parallel beam by a parabolic reflector and focused, through a rock crystal lens with an extremely long focal length, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... joint affections, they clog and obstruct the small blood-vessels, interfering with the nutrition of the joint-tissues, causing deformity and enlargement, as in arthritis deformans, as well as in acute inflammation, such as rheumatic fever. Indeed, this condition of subinfection, or "focal infection," is coming to be recognized as a far more important cause of disease than the time-honored autointoxication, a term which has been greatly abused ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... description. Her clothes and her manners and her accent all had come, albeit with slow indirectness, from London. Not only would she and her gowns pass muster in a crowd; but furthermore she would end by being the focal point of a good share of that crowd. Nevertheless, Weldon found it impossible to discover her most distinctive point. Even while he sought it, he wondered to himself whether this might not be another cousin of whom he had never heard. The women doctors ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... variety, and care should be taken to choose an instrument that is strongly made and of simple construction. The essentials of a good stand camera are that it shall be rigid, possess a rising and falling front, a swing back, and bellows which will be capable of extension to fully double the focal length of the lens to be ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... character of Quaker Hill had by 1880 drawn in its margins to "Quaker Hill Proper," though the population in these outlying neighborhoods had a passive acquiescence in it. They still respond to the activities which are centered in the focal neighborhood. Of themselves, none of these neighborhoods originates ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... the external, and, secondly, the internal. Properly speaking, all the positive effects of opium must be internal; for all its movements are inward in their direction, being refluent upon the focal centres of life. Thus, one of the most noticeable phenomena connected with opium-eating is the burden of life resting back upon the heart, which deliberately pulsates the moments of existence, as if the most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... interest to the picture, and more especially to give life to the shadows, several figures are introduced. It will be noticed that the cart is inserted at the focal point of the drawing to ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... few battles, and burn a few towns; it is a little gain and passing; for there is one thing that no armies, ships, or laws, or power on earth, or hell itself can down or crush—that alone is the thing that counts or endures—the thing that permeates these men, that finds its focal centre in such souls as that of the Vermont mother, steadfast, proud, and ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... undulating central plateau contains water catchment area and nature preserve Natural resources: fish, deepwater ports Land use: arable land: 4% permanent crops: 7% meadows and pastures: 0% forest and woodland: 5% other: 84% Irrigated land: NA km2 Environment: mostly urban and industrialized Note: focal point ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... I have for believing it to be true is that on that mountain-side near Lhasa I had a specially favourable opportunity of looking at the world from, as it were, a proper focal distance. And it is only from a proper focal distance that we can see what things really are. If we put ourselves right up against a picture in the National Gallery we cannot possibly see its beauty—see what the picture really is. No man is a hero to his own valet. And that is not because ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... of pollen-tubes is not difficult, but in most cases requires some practice with dissecting under a one-tenth of an inch focal distance single lens; and just at first this will seem to ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... manufacturing a telescope. His telescope, however, seems to have been made on a different construction from that of the Dutch optician. It consisted of a convex and concave glass, distant from each other by the difference of their focal lengths, like a modern opera-glass; while there is reason to believe that the other was made up of two convex lenses, distant by the sum of their focal lengths, the common construction of the astronomical telescope. Galileo's attention naturally was first turned ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... DOUBLE-BODIED FOLDING CAMERA, is superior to every other form of Camera, for the Photographic Tourist, from its capability of Elongation or Contraction to any Focal Adjustment, its Portability, and its adaptation for taking either Views or ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... FOLDING CAMERA, is superior to every other form of Camera, for the Photographic Tourist, from its capability of Elongation or Contraction to any Focal Adjustment, its extreme Portability, and its adaptation for taking either ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... things with frightful death. To him that will consider it, here is the stem, with its roots and top-root, with its world-wide upas boughs and accursed poison exudations, under which the world lies writhing in atrophy and agony. You touch the focal centre of all our disease, of our frightful nosology of diseases, when you lay your hand on this. There is no religion; there is no God; man has lost his soul, and vainly seeks antiseptic salt. Vainly: in killing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Attention is the unifying aspect of consciousness. There are always many things in consciousness, and we cannot respond to all at once. The part of consciousness that is clear and focal brings about action. The things to which we attend ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... flight into a hereafter. "There is no salvation in that sickly obscurantism which attempts to evade realities by confusing itself about them. Safety lies only in clarity and the struggle for the light. No subliminal nor fringe of consciousness can rank in the intellectual life beside the burning focal center where the rays of knowledge converge. The hope must be in following reason, not in thwarting it. To turn back from it is not mysticism, it is superstition. No; we must be prepared to see the higher criticism destroy the historicity of the ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... faces immediately before her, scrutinizing them casually, as if they were fish in an aquarium. She had dropped her lids slightly before her eyes came to rest on Clavering. He was leaning forward, his eyes hard and focal, doing his best to compel her notice. Her glance did linger on his for a moment before it moved on indifferently, but in that brief interval he experienced a curious ripple along his nerves . . . almost a note of warning. . . . They were very dark gray eyes, ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... region. But, just at present, what are the greatest commercial towns of the world? All ports to a man. And the day when it will be otherwise, if ever, seems still far distant. Look at the newest countries. What are their great focal points? Every one of them ports. Melbourne and Sydney; Rio, Buenos Ayres, and Valparaiso; Cape Town, San Francisco, Bombay, Calcutta, Yokohama. Chicago itself, the most vital and the quickest grower among modern ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... what had been done more than half a century ago by Hertz, when he concentrated electric waves upon a focal point by means of a concave mirror," said Hall, "I saw that the key I wanted lay in an extension of these experiments. At last I found that I could transform the energy of an engine into undulations of the ether, which, when they had been concentrated upon a metallic object, ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... during those intervals in which the flow of events is languid, or even ceases for the time to manifest any progress. The reader can hardly have failed to notice that the old Anchor Tavern had become the focal point where a good deal of mental activity converged. There were the village people, including a number of cultivated families; there were the visitors, among them many accomplished and widely travelled persons; there was the University, with its learned teachers and aspiring young men; there ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... contact of the plane and the sea. It is common, indeed, in levelling operations, to allow for the curvature of the earth. Newton's calculation was precisely similar. His plane glass was a tangent to his curved one. From its refractive index and focal distance he determined the diameter of the sphere of which his curved glass formed a segment, he measured the distances of his rings from the place of contact, and he calculated the depth between the tangent plane and the curved surface, exactly as the engineer would calculate the distance ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... under jib and mainsail, and boarding every vessel that carried the star-spangled "jack" at her fore-topgallant-mast head. Nothing could surpass the tranquil life of the scene: more than a hundred vessels, of all descriptions, were gradually but rapidly approaching a common focal point, the narrow entrance of Boston harbor, under the impulse of a fresh breeze from the south-east, that had not as yet brought forward its accompanying fogs and haze. The Albatross, her thin masts clothed from trucks to deck with snow-white canvass, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... opposite the amplitudes, the corresponding ages are found. Now, the Javal-Bull optometer permits of a quick determination of the value of the amplitude of accommodation in dioptries. (A dioptrie is the power of a lens whose focal distance is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... Hansen and Lehmann in their experiments consists of two large concave reflectors. These are placed at a convenient distance, one facing the other, so that two experimenters may be seated, the first having his mouth at the focal point of one reflector, the second with his ear at the focal point of the other. As the first experimenter repeats mentally any words or phrases, these are found to be unconsciously whispered. These sounds of whispering, inaudible under ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... photographic copy, could doubt that it was a genuine reproduction of a real list of signatures; and when half a dozen such copies, all just alike, were shown, the conviction became a certainty that all had a common origin. This copy was made with a Harrison's globe lens of sixteen inches' focal length, and was a very sharp and accurate duplicate of the original. It is claimed for this new American invention that it is "quite ahead of anything European"; and the certificates from the United States Coast-Survey Office go ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... different kinds: by the actions of acids on metals, by allowing vegetables to decay, by heating beef, mutton, and other animal substances, and by other methods. He says: "Having procured a lens of twelve inches diameter and twenty inches focal distance, I proceeded with great alacrity to examine, by the help of it, what kind of air a great variety of substances, natural and factitious, would yield.... With this apparatus, after a variety of other experiments.... on the 1st of August, ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... to rise a few feet. It was a cruel deception to play on the impatient. A mere cork, a tiny dark object like that, drifting along some distance out, would make a focal point in the fog, and would give the illusion of a clearance. Once, parading the deck as the man on watch, giving an occasional shake to the bell, I went suddenly happy with the certainty that I was now to be the harbinger of good tidings to those below playing cards. A vague elevated ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... that he was actually a focal point in human history, that the whole future of the human race depended to a tremendous extent on him, was a realization that weighed heavily and, at the same time, was ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... have now finished my third review of the heavens. The first was made with a Newtonian telescope something less than seven feet focal length, a power of 222, and an aperture of four and a half inches. It extended only to stars of the first, second, third, and fourth magnitudes. My second review was made with an instrument much superior to the other, of 85.2 inches focus, 6.2 inches aperture, ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... stir upon this subject which then was moving in the world. To these, if they should inquire for the great distinguishing principle of Coleridge's conversation, we might say that it was the power of vast combination 'in linked sweetness long drawn out.' He gathered into focal concentration the largest body of objects, apparently disconnected, that any man ever yet, by any magic, could assemble, or, having assembled, could manage. His great fault was, that, by not opening sufficient spaces for reply or suggestion, or collateral notice, he not only narrowed his own ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... River and the Dolomite road the Italians in Cadore had extended like two arms around one of the principal systems of defense. General Dankl hurried reenforcements to the Cadore front to check the thrust up the Cordevole Valley. At the end of this valley was the focal point of the system of railways that carried food and munitions to both the Trentino forces and those in southern Tyrol. If the Italians had succeeded in cutting the railway at this point the enemy would have had great difficulty in maintaining his armies on ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... of an ultroscope, then, are twin batteries with focal control and frequency control; an ultron shield, battery connected and adjustable, to intercept the direct rays from the "glow-spot," with an ordinary light-shield between it and the lens; and the lens itself, battery connected and with more or ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... impressions on the soul, not letters, but thrills, would have been its result. Thus the magic of personal influence of all kinds would have radiated from it in omnipresent and colliding circlets forever, as the mighty imponderable agents are believed to radiate from some hidden focal force. He would trace his idea in the massive architecture and groping science of Egypt,—in the elegant forms of worship, thought, institutes, and life among the Greeks,—in the martial and systematizing genius of Rome,—and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... her husband, the strenuous man of God. "As a wife for a period of more than twenty-six years," he wrote her on the completion of her fiftieth year, "you have left nothing undone to smooth the rugged pathway of my public career—to render home the all-powerful magnet of attraction, and the focal point of domestic enjoyment—to make my welfare and happiness at all times a matter of tender solicitude—and to demonstrate the depth and fixedness of that love which you so long ago plighted to me.... Whatever of human infirmity ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... into the adjoining room, and looked at the new telescope. It was taken from its case, put upon its tripod, and looked in beautiful condition. It is a refractor, made by Cooke and Sons of York. The object glass is three inches; the focal length forty-three inches; and the telescope, when drawn out, with the pancratic eyepiece attached, is about four feet. It was made after Mr. Robertson's directions, and is a sort ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... protection of trade was concerned, the effect therefore of the submarine campaign had been to remove the barrier established by the Grand Fleet and to transfer operations to the focal areas and approach routes. ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... thickened and adherent membranes, a cyst, or sclerosed patch of cortex; it may be necessary to interpose a layer of tissue, a flap of fascia lata, for example, between the bone and the cortex of the brain. The point at which the skull is opened is determined by the seat of the injury and the focal ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... be most useful as well as most pleasant, should not stand by itself, alone, but be connected with much study and talk of trees and kindred subjects beforehand and afterward. It should rather be the focal or culminating point of the year's observation of trees and other natural objects with which they are closely connected. The wise teacher will seek to cultivate the observing faculties of the pupils by calling their attention to the interesting things with which the natural world abounds. It ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston
... is intended that the pictures taken are to be viewed by an instrument that requires their distance from the eyes to be less than the focal length of the lens used in their formation, what is the result? Why, that they subtend an angle larger than in nature, and are consequently apparently increased in bulk; and the obvious remedy is to increase the angle ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... unite in an "image point''; and therefore an "object space'' is reproduced in an "image space.'' The introduction of simple auxiliary terms, due to C. F. Gauss (Dioptrische Untersuchungen, Gottingen, 1841), named the focal lengths and focal planes, permits the determination of the image of any object for any system (see LENS). The Gaussian theory, however, is only true so long as the angles made by all rays with the optical axis ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia |
