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Propulsion   Listen
noun
Propulsion  n.  
1.
The act driving forward or away; the act or process of propelling; as, steam propulsion.
2.
An impelling act or movement. "God works in all things; all obey His first propulsion."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Propulsion" Quotes from Famous Books



... grandson now determined to appeal to the feeling of Nationality in its narrowest and strongest form. That instinct, which Mazzini looked on as the means of raising in turn all the peoples of the world to the loftier plane of Humanity, was now to be the chief motive in the propulsion of the Juggernaut car ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... days, or we should all be subjected to the horrors of starvation. I positively dreaded to think of what might be the effect of this upon the women; therefore, that we might not lie there absolutely helpless, I started to scull the boat with the steering oar. But she was heavy for this style of propulsion, and I estimated that our progress did not amount to more than three-quarters of ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... conception was as transitional and inadequate as the methods and ideas of the practical movers, who were to a man left stranded in every country in Europe, during the period of his poetic activity. A transitional and unstable movement of society inevitably fails to supply a propulsion powerful enough to make its poetic expression eternal. There is no better proof of the enormous force of Byron's genius than that it was able to produce so fine an expression of elements so intrinsically unfavourable to high poetry as doubt, denial, antagonism, and weariness. But this ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley

... heavier-than-air flight is less than two decades old, and successful dirigible propulsion antedates it by a very short period, the mass of experiment and accomplishment renders any one-volume history of the subject a matter of selection. In addition to the restrictions imposed by space limits, the material ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... which he was to ride was about sixty-five feet in diameter and approximately three times that in length. The propulsion was, the builders and engineers acknowledged, not the ultimate by any means. They were still constantly experimenting and hoping for much swifter travel. Still, they ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans

... nor the other of these things occurred, but that the submarine's delicate electrical machinery was thrown out of order by the violence of a depth-charge explosion, even when a considerable distance away. With the electric engines used for submerged propulsion no longer available, and possibly the interior of the vessel in darkness, there were only two courses open. She could either rise to the surface and endeavour to fight it out with the aid of her powerful deck guns, or else sink ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... thinks Philip Hardin, as he sees these dazzling rockets rise, with golden trails, into the social darkness of the Western skies, "they are really the upper classes here. Their power of propulsion to the zenith is inherent in themselves. If they mingle, in time, with the aristocratic noblesse of Europe, they may infuse a certain picturesque element." Hardin realizes that some of the children of these millionnaires of a day will ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... and legs alike do their share in the propulsion of the body, the legs perform by far the most important work, and the importance of a good "kick" cannot be too strongly urged. Though the action of the soles of the feet upon the water helps the "drive," the momentum is also given by the "wedge" of water embraced and driven backwards by the action ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... himself by the window, and gazed out into the darkness. He considered piously the wonders of terrestrial life, a succession of accidents all foreordained by God, an apparent drifting that was in fact one steady propulsion by the hand of fate. From the rich, ancestral house of coraline limestone across the sea to strange lands. From dignity to abasement. From loneliness to this faint, delicious fragrance in which the heart dissolved. From a dream ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... take this money, although knowing well enough it was not mine to take, was too great for me. It was the resultant of every force of, I might say, my special business propulsion. This temptation lay along the lines on which I had built up my life: the pursuance of a line of action by which I might get rich quick.—Then came the crash. That special guaranteed stock broke—never to rally in time to save me—sixty-five points. The syndicate sent out warning signals to me that ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... position, the Leviathan's tail acts in a different manner from the tails of all other sea creatures. It never wriggles. In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority. To the whale, his tail is the sole means of propulsion. Scroll-wise coiled forwards beneath the body, and then rapidly sprung backwards, it is this which gives that singular darting, leaping motion to the monster when furiously swimming. His side-fins only serve ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... sense, is present in some mammals, but it is by no means so phenomenal as in some species of birds. In mammals it is individual rather than species-wide. Individual horses, dogs and cats have done wonderful things under the propulsion of the homing instinct, but that instinct is by no means general throughout those species. Among wild animals, exhibitions of the home-finding instinct are rare, but the annals of the Zoological Park contain ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... organization. Gee-Gee Gould was electronics chief for all three projects. Dick Earle was electronics chief for Pegasus, under Gould, and there were also electronics chiefs for Orion and Cetus. Similarly, the projects had air-frame departments, propulsion departments, instrumentation departments, ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... he caught up a long pole, and pressing one end against the bed of the river exerted himself with might and main to impel the boat forward. He called to the two men to do the same, and under their united propulsion the boat advanced, but at a ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... everything, locked the store and started out to procure a rig, but found there were none to be had for love or money. The only article of propulsion we could hire were saddle mules. Both quickly mounted and on a slow trot started for the ring. We had been there less than an hour when both of us became thoroughly disgusted and started on the return trip. When about seven miles ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young

... much care where it lifts or sets down, since its method of propulsion isn't trying to work against the fabric of space itself. For that reason, an interstellar vessel is normally built in space and stays there, using ion rockets for loading and unloading its passengers. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... was a long slender ship of extremely low freeboard, rakish rigged as a single-master, both sails and oars being used as a means of propulsion; two small cannon were mounted forward, and a round dozen arquebuses were also carried. The total company and passengers of the three ships were ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole

... afterthought. Why should men start upon the more difficult form and proceed to the easier? It is not their usual way. In learning to skate, for instance, they do not cut figures before practising loose and easy propulsion. ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... be below," said Professor Prescott. "From what I have seen of experimental models, the propulsion impulse must originate ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... storage batteries for street cars, and that continued and substantial progress is being made in each successive case. The prejudices against the application of secondary batteries are being rapidly dispelled, and there are indications everywhere that this method of propulsion will soon take a recognized place among the great transit facilities in the United States. I feel convinced that this country will also in this respect be far ahead of Europe before another year has ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various

... light. Perhaps the most important invention, however, was that of the working steam engine, made by Watt only about a hundred years ago. The most recent application of this form of energy has been in the propulsion of ships, which has already produced so great an effect upon commerce, navigation, and the spread of population over ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... the Damon Whizzer. Maybe Demon Whizzer would be more appropriate, but we won't decide on that now. Anyhow, it's going to be a whizzer, and I want to talk to you about it. There is an entirely new principle of elevation and propulsion involved in my Whizzer, ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton

... convict-hulk, and seeing the anchor-founderies in operation, the Khan crossed to Blackwall, and returned to town by the railway, his first conveyance when he landed in England. His increased experience in steam-travelling had now, however, enabled him to detect the difference between the mode of propulsion by engines on the other railroads, and the "immense cables made of iron wires" by which the vehicles are drawn on this line; the construction of which, as well as the electro-telegraph, ("a process for which we have no phrase in Oordoo,") ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... another little idiosyncrasy of design that escaped us both until she was about ready to launch—there was no method of propulsion. Her sides were far too high to permit the use of sweeps, and when Perry suggested that we pole her, I remonstrated on the grounds that it would be a most undignified and awkward manner of sweeping down upon the foe, ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... too far from the center of things. He suddenly decided to double on his tracks and swing down to Chicago. Just why he felt as he did he could not fathom. But the feeling was there. It was an instinctive propulsion, a "hunch." These hunches were to him, working in the dark as he was compelled to, very much what whiskers are to a cat. They could not be called an infallible guide. But they at least kept ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer

... between the gill slits. There is no -distinct- heart, but the whole of the cardiac aorta is contractile, and at the bases of the aortic arches that run up the bars there are contractile dilatations that assist in the propulsion of the blood. Dorsal to the pharynx, as in fishes, there is a pair of dorsal aorta (d.ao.) that unite above the liver (compare the frog, for instance), and thence run backward as a median dorsal aorta (d.ao.'). ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... thing was extremely small, even for me, and I can hardly imagine that it could have floated with a full-sized man. There was one thwart set as low as possible, a kind of stretcher in the bows, and a double paddle for propulsion. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... this city Dec. 6, 1867, at the age of 67. A long and eminently useful although unobtrusive life entitles his memory to respect. He commenced his career as a mechanic in the steam engine establishment of James P. Allaire, soon after the application of steam for the propulsion of boats and long before its application to ships for the purposes of commerce or war. For fifty-two years, with the exception of one or two brief intervals, he was connected with the Allaire works ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... Miller's greatest claim to fame arises from his endeavours to introduce steam-power as an agent in the propulsion of ships at sea. Mr. Clerk of Eldin had already invented the system of "breaking the line" in naval engagements—a system that was first practised with complete success by Lord Rodney in his engagement off Martinico ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... timber—not yet firmly lashed together—lay loose and loggish upon the water, and moved very slowly and irregularly under such ill-assorted propulsion: and, notwithstanding that the raft had obtained a hundred yards the start of the swimmers, its occupants began seriously to dread ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... slowly along at the rate of a few inches, or at the utmost 2 or 3 feet per day, abrade, groove, and polish the rock, and the larger blocks are reciprocally grooved and polished by the rock on their lower sides. As the forces both of pressure and propulsion are enormous, the sand acting like emery polishes the surface; the pebbles, like coarse gravers, scratch and furrow it; and the large stones scoop out grooves in it. Lastly, projecting eminences of rock, called "roches moutonnees," are smoothed and worn into the shape of flattened ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... bow and arrow, that the force with which an arrow can be thrown depends not upon any independent action of the bow, but altogether upon the strength of the man who draws it. The bow, in straightening itself for the propulsion of the arrow, expends only the force which the man has imparted to it by bending it; so that the real power by which the arrow is propelled is, after all, the muscular strength of the archer. It is true, a great deal depends on the qualities of the bow, and ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... supplied by European manufactures, for a long time to come make the home-supply the chief care of our artisans. They have, for such and other reasons, in some points lost ground of late. The revolution in the propulsion and construction of ships, for instance, has not found them prepared to take the advantage they have usually done of improvements. Not only do the British screw-steamers take undisputed possession of our trade ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... the case with the positive seer, but is an actual vision of a fact or event which has already happened or as it will transpire in the future. Thus the positive vision consists in the projection of the mind towards the things of the soul-world, while the passive vision in the result of a propulsion of the soul-world upon the passive sense. Of the two kinds of vision, the passive is the more serviceable as being the more perspicuous and literal, but it has the disadvantage of being largely under the control of external ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial

... they surround. Their purpose, as a rule, is to move, or control the movement of, materials within cavities and tubes, and they do this by means of the pressure which they exert. Examples of their action have already been studied in the propulsion of the food through the alimentary canal and in the regulation of the flow of blood through the arteries (pages 159 and 49). While they do not contract so quickly, nor with such great force as the striated muscles, their work is more closely ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... little or nothing in the shape of material reward. He may receive a little voluntary assistance in the cultivation of his field; in travelling by boat he is accorded the place of honour and ease in the middle of the boat, and he is not expected to help in its propulsion. His principal rewards are the social precedence and deference accorded him and the satisfaction found in the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... injury done tendons, is strain or sprain. Because of the sudden tensile strain brought to bear upon tendons in the shocks of concussion, as well as in propulsion of the body, there frequently occurs a rupture of fibers and this we ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix

... frequently the Captain insisted on taking his turn at the fire or washing the tin dishes after the meal; while the Cook was able and willing to stand his "trick at the wheel" when the occasion arose. This was, of course, stretching the imagination pretty far, since their only means of propulsion or steering rested ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne

... weight of his thought, like a branch beneath the weight of its fruit. Bacon seems to have written his essays with Shakspeare's pen. There is a certain want of ease about the old writers which has an irresistible charm. The language flows like a stream over a pebbled bed, with propulsion, eddy, and sweet recoil—the pebbles, if retarding movement, giving ring and dimple to the surface, and breaking the whole into babbling music. There is a ceremoniousness in the mental habits of these ancients. Their intellectual garniture is picturesque, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... the mixer car and passing through slots in the floor to anchors placed one 500 ft. in front and one 500 ft. to the rear enabled the train to be moved back and forth along the work. This scheme of self-propulsion saved the hire of a locomotive. In another case the mixer was discharged into buckets which were handled by a crane traveling back and forth along a track laid ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... primitive races, applying their wisdom and learning to the investigation of the origin of domestic and other implements and contrivances, inform us that the first boat was probably a log, on which the man sat astride, using a stick as a means of propulsion. In time the idea of hollowing the log occurred, Nature undoubtedly presenting the model and inviting the novice to squat inside. But what was the inhabitant of a certain island in the Gulf of Carpentaria to do since Nature failed to provide a ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... shallow, poles are used, which the men handled very dexterously, nicking in and out amongst the rocks and rapids in the neatest way; but in the main the propulsion was by our paddles, a delight to me, having been bred to canoeing from boyhood. We stopped for luncheon at a lovely "place of trees" overhanging a deep, dark, alluring pool, where we knew there were fish, but had no time to make a cast. So far the ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair

... the medium of the leaflets of the nibong palms, many of which were found near the spot where they had encamped. The pith of the same palm served him for the swell of the arrow, which, being compressible like cork, fills up the tube of the sumpitan, and renders the shaft subject to propulsion from the quick puff of breath which the blow-gun marksman, from long practice, knows how ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... vertical shaft or stake, provided with a couple of old cart-wheels, in a hole in the ice. One wheel acts as a turning base and prevents the shaft from sinking into the pond, and the other forms a support for the long sweep attached for propulsion purposes, and should be fastened to the shaft about 3 ft. above the base wheel. The sleds are made fast in a string to the long end of the sweep, which when turned rapidly causes the sleds to slide over the ice in a ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... air method of propulsion did away with the necessity of a large propellor such as most airships have to use, a propellor which must of necessity be very light ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood

... white canoe was approaching, still gliding noiselessly over the water, without any apparent power of propulsion, and in it were seated two men. One had a long white beard and a profusion of white hair. He was dressed entirely in white, and sat in the stern of the canoe. The other was Captain Justin Bellwood, quite unharmed, and looking very much at ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish

... BICYCLE PROPULSION.—So much has been invented for and said about bicycles, that it seems strange that anything is left to say or to do, yet here is a very novel idea. It is not so very long since wind and water were the only motor powers, but those days are ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 42, August 26, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... to a vertical one. He glanced up at the quiet stars, at the same time emptying his lungs of air. With swift, vigorous propulsion of hands and feet, he lifted his shoulders and half his chest out of water. This was to gain impetus for the descent. Then he let himself go and sank without movement, a white statue, into the sea. He breathed in the water deeply, deliberately, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... lady returned to a sense of the situation, and Ransom helped her out of the vehicle, with the aid, as before, of a certain amount of propulsion from the conductor. Her road branched off to the right, and she had to wait on the corner of a street, there being as yet no blue car within hail. The corner was quiet and the day favourable to patience—a day of relaxed rigour and intense brilliancy. It was as if the touch of the air itself ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... Britain, maintained that the greatest hindrances to the solution of the problem of mechanical flight have always been the balloon and the airscrew. Mr. William Cochrane, in a paper read a few months earlier, laid it down that the airscrew must give place to a more efficient form of propulsion. Utterances like these help to explain the fervour with which Santos Dumont, in the book called My Airships (1904), defends the rotary principle, which is the life of machines. Like the Wrights, he believed in practice, and was a skilled and experienced balloonist before he attempted ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... search of the deserter, but he applied himself heartily to the propulsion of aunt Ermine, informing Rose that Mr. Clare was no end of a man, much better than if he could see, and aunt Rachel was ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... could tame wild horses and drive anything that wore hair could by no means fail to guide a bit of machinery that wouldn't r'ar and run even if a newspaper blew across its face. He mounted the seat, on his first essay alone, with the jauntiness becoming a master of vehicular propulsion. There may have been in his secret heart a bit of trepidation, now that the instructor was not there. In fact, one of the assembled villagers who closely observed his demeanour related afterward that ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... which I spoke is a new application of drive principle which has given to us a greatly improved effective velocity for space propulsion. Forty years ago, the minimum elapsed time of return travel to the presumed sector within which the Omega World should lie was about a century. Today we have the techniques to construct a small scouting vessel capable of making the transit in just ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer

... indebted to Robert Fulton for the practical application of steam to the purposes of navigation. Whatever has been claimed for or by others in regard to the priority of the invention or application of the mighty power of steam to the propulsion of vessels, Fulton was "the first to apply it with any degree of practical success," as an English work states it. As one who labored for years over the idea which came from his own brain, though it also came to others, who wellnigh sacrificed his own life in its improvement, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... them. Such a float as they needed was at their call. There lay a half dozen logs and trees fastened together by several withes, and with enough buoyancy to bear them to the other side. Even the pole to be used in propulsion lay upon the heavy timbers that were pulled just far enough against the bank to prevent them floating off ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... something different from anything in either Christian or Turkish fleets. They were an attempt to reach a combination of galleon and galley, possessing the bulk, strength, and heavy armament of the former, together with the oar propulsion of the latter to render them independent of the wind. But like most, if not all, compromise types, the galleass was short-lived. It was clumsy and slow, being neither one thing nor the other. Most of the time on the cruise these galleasses ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... as a flying machine. This latter term is properly used only in referring to heavier-than-air machines which have no gas-bag lifting devices, and are made to really fly by the application of engine propulsion. ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell

... miles away. His dog welcomed us with all the passion of canine hunger and days of isolation, but the master was gone to Leech Lake, as we afterward found from his Cass Lake neighbors. The wind favored a sail across the lake—a welcome variation from our hitherto entirely muscular propulsion—so we rigged our spars and canvas, drifted smoothly out into the trough of the lively but not angry waves, and swept swiftly across the clear, bright little sea. The white caps dashed over our decks and a few sharp puffs half careened our little ships, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... could supply—the sword, the spear, and so forth. With the growth of prudence in military affairs the projectile came more and more into favor, and is now held in high esteem by the most courageous. Its capital defect is that it requires personal attendance at the point of propulsion. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... This, be it observed, was only two years after Watt had patented his first steam engine, and it was nearly fifty years before Stephenson built his first locomotive. The railroad originally was as completely dissociated from steam propulsion as was the ship. Just as vessels had existed for ages before the introduction of mechanical power, so the railroad bad been a familiar sight in the mining districts of England for at least two centuries before the invention of Watt really gave ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody

... Hound, latest and largest model of Tom's amazing diving seacopter. It had an enclosed central rotor, powered by atomic turbines, with reversible-pitch blades for air lift or undersea diving. Superheated steam jets provided forward propulsion in either element. ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... if suspended (Gray). There are various types which have been called the paralytic, the choreic, and the saltatory. A tendency to go backward or retropulsion has been observed, according to Gray, as has also a tendency to go forward or propulsion. A curious phenomenon in this disease is that the patient can use the legs perfectly well lying in bed. The prognosis seems ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... types may be said to embrace all the engines now being manufactured in this country for the propulsion of steam vessels by the screw propeller. In their leading principles they also embrace nearly all paddle engines now being built, whether the cylinders be oscillating, fixed vertically, or inclined ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... inches of railroad iron, set aslant like a gable roof, and heavily backed up with timber and cotton bales. Her whole bow formed a powerful ram; the shield, flat on the top, was pierced for ten guns of heavy calibre, three in each broadside, two forward, and two aft. Had her means of propulsion proved equal to her power of attack and defence, it is doubtful if the whole Union navy on the Mississippi could have stood against her single-handed. The situation thus strangely recalls that presented by the Merrimac, or Virginia, in Hampton Roads ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... revel in the pleasant propulsion of the maelstrom's rim, unaware that every instant brings us closer to dangers, escape from which would demand herculean effort. Irresponsible emotions are, like those of the novel and the stage, when intensified ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... of touch, between nature and man. "I am much better," he writes, "and my new and tender health is all over me like a voluptuous feeling." And whatever fame, or charm, or life-inspiring gift he has had as a speculative thinker, is the vibration of the interest he excited then, the propulsion into years which clouded his early promise of that first buoyant, irresistible, self-assertion. So great is even the indirect power of a sincere effort towards the ideal life, of even a temporary escape ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... born in Pennsylvania; began life as a miniature portrait and landscape painter, in which he made some progress, but soon turned to engineering; he was one of the first to apply steam to the propulsion of vessels, and devoted much attention to the invention of submarine boats and torpedoes; he built a steamboat to navigate the Hudson River, with a very slow rate of progress however, making only ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... suddenly at right angles with the head, it much resembles an elephant's trunk shorn off at the mouth. Its length averages from eight to fourteen feet; there is no dorsal fin, and the tail is horizontal; colour blue, and white beneath. Its means of propulsion are two paddles, with which it also crawls along the bottom, and beneath which are situated the udders, with teats exactly like a cow's. Its flesh is far from bad, resembling lean beef in appearance, though hardly so good to the taste, and ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... indeed are still called, rolling-roads were cut through the forest. They were narrow roads adown which hogsheads of tobacco, fitted with axles, could be drawn or rolled from inland plantations to the river or bay side; sometimes the hogsheads were simply rolled by human propulsion, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... N. impulse, impulsion, impetus; momentum; push, pulsion^, thrust, shove, jog, jolt, brunt, booming, boost [U.S.], throw; explosion &c (violence) 173; propulsion &c 284. percussion, concussion, collision, occursion^, clash, encounter, cannon, carambole^, appulse^, shock, crash, bump; impact; elan; charge &c (attack) 716; beating &c (punishment) 972. blow, dint, stroke, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... wasted. Besides the emission of it is accompanied with a peculiar species of tension and convulsion of the whole frame, which is always succeeded by relaxation. For the same reason, even libidinous thoughts, without any loss of semen, are debilitating, though in a less degree, by occasioning a propulsion ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport

... the Sea Hound, Tom's favorite model of his diving seacopter. A powerful central rotor with reversible-pitch blades, spun by atomic turbines, enabled the craft to rise through the air or descend into the deepest abysses of the ocean. Propulsion jets gave it high speed ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton

... flat-bottomed punt used by fishermen, and at present moored to a stake at the river-bank. It was capacious, certainly, but not exactly the sort of boat in which to get up much pace, particularly as its sole apparent mode of propulsion was by means of two very long boat-hooks, one on either side. These details, however, presented few obstacles to the minds of the enterprising explorers. The punt was in many ways adapted for a voyage such as they proposed to take. There was room to walk about in it. Nay, ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... out, somebody had had the forethought to get these spars overboard and secured to the wreck of the foremast; and in subsequently planning our raft it had been our intention to get the topgallant-yard on end to serve as a mast, with the sail as our means of propulsion through the water. Our plans were not carried out to such a stage of completeness as this when the strange sail hove in sight, and all our energies were now employed to get this part of the work done forthwith; as I felt convinced that, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... have been desired for the scion of a noble house, whose pampered whims and vices were to be ministered to by the lavish hand of a fond parent, and where the display of mental abilities was no more necessary than in the propulsion of the mechanism of one of Her Majesty's establishments erected for the ambulating exercises of petty delinquents, yet to a young and high-spirited nature, such as John Ferguson's, the very absence of any intellectual requirements ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... to convince himself that this interest in guns and marksmanship had any sinister propulsion back of it. His father and brothers had always been this way. Rifles were as important to pioneers as plows, and their skillful use was an achievement every frontiersman tried to attain. Friendly rivalry had always existed ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... ventilation is accomplished either by aspirating the air from the building, known as the vacuum or extraction method, or by forcing into the building air from without; this is known as the plenum or propulsion method. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various

... Balle" must, on no account, be touched with the foot, but merely slapped playfully, enough for the purposes of propulsion, with the palm ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various

... winds, to find at some crucial moment part of his fleet thrown hopelessly to leeward. These two points were of the very essence of sailing tactics, and these two points have been eliminated from the modern tactical problem by the changes of propulsion and armament. Lord Nelson was the first to disregard them with conviction and audacity sustained by an unbounded trust in the men he led. This conviction, this audacity and this trust stand out from amongst ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... as though one should say that a clever engineer had conceived the idea of constructing an improved series of railway engines, combining all the meritorious points in stationary and locomotive engines, with Isaac Watts' highly ingenious discovery of screw propulsion. For the Gregorian and Newtonian instruments simply differ in sending the rays received from the great mirror in different directions, and Dolland's discovery relates to the ordinary forms of telescopes with large lens, not with large mirror.] However, accumulating ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... and divide it more perfectly. No blades or projections are affixed to the interior of the cylinder. Above, where the peat enters into a flaring hopper, is a scraper, that prevents adhesion to the sides and gives downward propulsion to the peat. The blades are, by this construction, very strong, and not liable to injury from small stones or roots, and effectually reduce the ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson

... the newly developed atomic disintegrators. Many holes equally spaced over the sphere were the outlets for the dissolving ray—most of them on the bottom and alternating with them on the bottom and sides were the outlets of powerful rocket propulsion tubes, which would enable it to rise easily from the hole it would presently blast into the earth. A small, tight-fitting door gave entrance to the double-walled interior, where, in spite of the space taken up by batteries and mechanisms and an enclosed gyroscope for keeping the borer ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... to the fur seals are the much larger animals popularly known as sea-lions. These still exist in great numbers in south temperate waters. Both are distinguished from the hair seals by one obvious characteristic: their method of propulsion on land is by a "lolloping" motion, in which the front and hind flippers are used alternately. The hair seals move by a caterpillar-like shuffle, making little or no use of their flippers; and so, the terminal parts of their flippers are not bent outwards as they ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... the lever. The boat trembled like an automobile under the propulsion of the engine. The propeller ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson

... obliquely placed, so as to constitute, one with the other, so many obtuse angles, to the end, that by forming powerful levers, and affording every advantage for action to the muscles attached to them, they may be fitted for the purpose of propulsion of the body onward.' ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... uncle, myself, the guide, two other passengers and the four horses, trusted ourselves to a somewhat fragile raft. Accustomed as I was to the swift and sure steamers on the Elbe, I found the oars of the rowers rather a slow means of propulsion. It took us more than an hour to cross the fiord; but the passage was effected ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... But the steamer has inexorable limitations. Break her machinery, and, if there be no friendly dock open to receive her, she is reduced at once to a sailing ship, and generally a poor one, too. Nor need you suppose accidents to cause this loss of efficiency. The mode of propulsion implies brevity of power. The galley depended upon the stalwart arms of its crew, and they were as likely to be strong to-morrow as to-day, and next month as to-morrow. The ship puts her trust in her white sails and in the free winds of heaven, which, however fickle they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... of propulsion was, in the lecturer's opinion, sufficiently advanced to assure practical success under suitable circumstances—such as for suburban tramways, elevated lines, and above all lines through tunnels; such as the Metropolitan and District Railways. The advantages were that the weight, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various

... a sort of house for Andree and his companions, and to the netting of this were lashed provisions, sledges, frame boats, and other appliances to meet the needs of the explorers if their balloon was wrecked on the northern ice. There was no means of propulsion, but three heavy guide ropes, trailing on the ground, afforded a feeble and uncertain control. The whole reliance of Andree was placed, consciously and with full knowledge of the consequences, on the possibility that a strong and favouring wind might carry him across the Pole. The ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock

... "Rocket propulsion," laughed Hart. "I should have warned you. Those tubes you saw outside at the tail and along the leading edge of the wings. Only used three of them, but that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... gas for other purposes is caused the Government see no objection to its use for the propulsion of motor-cars. On receiving this information Mr. PEMBERTON BILLING at once ordered a Zeppelin attachment to his famous torpedo-shaped car. No other gas-consumer will suffer, as he is prepared to keep the apparatus inflated from his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various

... The final propulsion was to come from an entirely different quarter. In November, 1847, the Reverend Mr. Gorham was presented by the Lord Chancellor to the living of Bramford Speke in the diocese of Exeter. The Bishop, Dr. Phillpotts, was a High Churchman, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... confidential repeat secret and confidential inquiry as to the whereabouts of Dr. Dimitri O. Voronoff, the noted Soviet rocket expert, designer of the new guided missile Marxist Victory, who vanished a week ago from the Josef Vissarionovitch Djugashvli Reaction-Propulsion Laboratories at Molotovgorod. It is feared in Government circles that this noted scientist has been abducted by agents of the United Peoples' Republics of East Asia, possibly to extract from him, under torture, information of a ...
— Operation R.S.V.P. • Henry Beam Piper

... Sir William Siemens of braking the train by converting the motor into a dynamo and thus utilizing the energy of momentum, he believed that the economy in fuel alone was sufficient to prove that the application of power by electricity was preferable to direct steam propulsion ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various

... nation of the world, China relied upon navigation by junks, which crept slowly against the current when urged by strong winds, and lay idle or were towed or poled by men when calms or head-breezes prevailed. Of steam applied to propulsion, she had no knowledge, until steamboats of foreign construction appeared in her waters and roused the wonder of the oblique-eyed natives by their mysterious powers. The first steamboat to ascend a Chinese river created a greater ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... been playing with them at first, and doing no more than to ascertain their speed and power of propulsion, and had all along intended to reserve themselves for this triumph at the last. As soon as we reached the winning point, I rose up to give the cheer of victory, but just at that moment, they suddenly backed water with their paddles, and in turning towards the boat, the toe of my boot caught ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... each with passengers; a Pullman car weighs about 30 tons. Our steamers consume 5 lbs. of coal per horse-power in one hour. And last, not least, one of the greatest improvements we have had in steam propulsion is the screw. Again, I may also name the great advantage derived from steam by our farmers in thrashing out grain. The engines principally used in farm-work are what are termed high-pressure, or of the same class as the locomotive. The great saving in cost in ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... the steamboat almost all earlier means of propulsion, natural and artificial, were used as models by the inventors. The fins of fishes, the webbed feet of amphibious birds, the paddles of the Indian, and the poles and oars of the riverman, were all imitated by the patient inventors struggling with the problem. Rumsey's first effort was a copy ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert

... will support our hopes. What will fascinate us in the past will be the records of inventions, of great choices, of those alternatives on which destiny seems to hang. The splendid epochs will be interpreted as monuments of man's creation, not of his propulsion. We shall be interested primarily in the way nations established their civilization in spite of hostile conditions. Admiration will go out to the men who did not submit, who bent things to human use. We may see the entire tragedy of life in ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... closed his jaws on the back and side of the neck. Such abrupt arrest in mid-flight by the heavier dog brought the fox-terrier down on deck with, a heavy thump. Simultaneous with this, Captain Duncan's second kick landed, communicating such propulsion to Michael as to tear his clenched teeth through the flesh and out of the flesh of ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... an elongated cylinder having a charge chamber in its rear portion, which contains powder for propulsion. The point is a pointed axical bolt, whose rear is furnished with a percussion cap, to be exploded by the forward motion of a striker on ...
— A Refutation of the Charges Made against the Confederate States of America of Having Authorized the Use of Explosive and Poisoned Musket and Rifle Balls during the Late Civil War of 1861-65 • Horace Edwin Hayden

... acting up to his highest under- 67:12 standing, firm at the post of duty, the mariner works on and awaits the issue. Thus should we deport ourselves on the seething ocean of sorrow. Hoping and work- 67:15 ing, one should stick to the wreck, until an irresistible propulsion precipitates his doom or ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... and the paddle-wheel constitute at present the means of propulsion that are exclusively employed when one has recourse to a motive power for effecting the propulsion of a boat. The sail constitutes an entirely different mode, and should not figure in our enumeration, considering the essentially variable ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various

... the suit's servomotors and propulsion units, motion across the ice, against the buffeting wind, was a cumbersome business. But Massan continued to work his way across the iceberg, fighting down a gnawing, growing fear that Odal was not ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova

... frame of the motor is of aluminum, by which considerable saving in weight is effected; as in the earlier model, the moving parts of the motor are immersed in an oil bath. The pedals are employed to start, or as an auxiliary, or in the event of a breakdown. When not required for propulsion, they are thrown out of gear, when they serve as foot rests, and also as a means for actuating an emergency brake. The carburetor is no longer attached to the gasoline reservoir, but is separate; the explosions ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various



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