"Magnetic needle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a cradle and read the secret message traced by a divine hand and wrapped up in that bit of clay, any more than you can see the North Star in the magnetic needle. God has loaded the needle of that young life so it will point to the star of its own destiny; and though you may pull it around by artificial advice and unnatural education, and compel it to point to the star which presides ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... be depended on when visible. On a cloudy day or night the bark of the trees would serve as a guide; since the green, mossy side was almost invariably toward the north. Besides, Paul knew how to make a compass out of his watch, though he generally carried a real magnetic needle in ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... to overestimate distances is almost universal among explorers who set the first distances, and it ought to be reckoned as a factor of error, like the dip of the magnetic needle. But they did their best. And we want to remember that they were the first white men to come up this river, whereas we are ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... which had been finally settled between them—for all that they had once been bitter enemies, and were by disposition and development as radically opposite as the positive and negative points of a magnetic needle, Frank Merriwell and Bartley Hodge ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... and in about four hours and a half I found the balloon sufficiently inflated. I attached the car and put all my implements in it—a telescope, a barometer, a thermometer, an [v]electrometer, a compass, a magnetic needle, a seconds watch, a bell, and other things. I had further procured a globe of glass, exhausted of air and carefully closed with a stopper, not forgetting a special apparatus for condensing air, a copious supply of water, and a large quantity ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... of the magnetic needle, we found, as usual, our compasses differ among themselves, sometimes near 2 deg.; the same compass too, would sometimes make nearly this difference in the variation on different days, and even between the morning and evening ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... the United States and Europe. Little damage was done, but those having offices in tall buildings had an unpleasant experience which they will not soon forget. A peculiar phenomenon accompanying this seismic disturbance was the variation of the magnetic needle by over eighty degrees from north to east and an extraordinary rise and fall of the barometer. All wireless communication had to be abandoned, owing to the ionizing of the atmosphere, and up to the time ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... first to discover that the earth is a great magnet, and he not only gave the name of "pole" to the extremities of the magnetic needle, but also spoke of these "poles" as north and south pole, although he used these names in the opposite sense from that in which we now use them, his south pole being the extremity which pointed towards the north, and vice versa. He was also first to make use of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... symptoms of eruption were most encouraging. She has already quarrelled with all her family,—accusing her father of bigamy, her uncle Benoni of polytheism, her brother Zeno C. of aneurism, and her sister Eudoxy Trithemia of the variation of the magnetic needle. If ever hopes of seeing a perfect case of Primitive Christian were well-founded, I think ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... general. The kind of season which prevails in one country is often quite reversed in another perhaps in the adjacent one. Not so with our auroral displays. They are universal on both sides of the globe; and from pole to pole the magnetic needle trembles during their continuance. Some authorities are of opinion that these eleven-year cycles are subject to a larger cycle, but sun-spot observations have not existed long enough to determine this point. For myself, I have a great difficulty in forming an opinion. I have very ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... guide as to our direction, unerring as the magnetic needle: we were traversing the region of the "polar plant," the planes of whose leaves, at almost every step, pointed out our meridian. It grew upon our track, and was crushed under the hoofs of our horses ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... light of these discoveries upon the darkest physical phenomenon of that day. Arago had discovered in 1824, that a disk of non-magnetic metal had the power of bringing a vibrating magnetic needle suspended over it rapidly to rest; and that on causing the disk to rotate the magnetic needle rotated along with it. When both were quiescent, there was not the slightest measurable attraction or repulsion exerted between the needle and the disk; still when in motion the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... days successively until he became familiar with the operation of the machinery, and the movements of the boat. He found that she was as obedient to her helm under water, as any boat could be on the surface, and that the magnetic needle traversed as well in the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... be warranted. In the hematitic iron ores of Lake Superior, magnetism is less pronounced than in the magnetites; and in the soft hydrous hematites, like those of the Mesabi district, it may cause only slight disturbance of the magnetic needle. This disturbance is usually sufficient to locate the position of the iron-bearing formation, though not the position ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... ships which had carried the crusaders to Asia were now used to explore new coasts and harbors. Navigators learned to be bolder. A navigator of Genoa—a city made by the commerce which the Crusades necessitated—crosses the Atlantic Ocean. As the magnetic needle, which a Venetian traveller brought from Asia, gave a new direction to commerce, so the new stimulus to learning which the Grecian philosophy effected led to the necessity of an easier form of writing; and printing appeared. With the shock which feudalism ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... to say the cotton-plant; a country of Asia where it is a mark of nobility for the women to have tiny feet, on which account they are bandaged in their infancy, that they may only grow to half their natural size; the magnetic needle which points out the north to mariners; the country of the five thousand islands (Oceania); the roundness of the earth, which is such that the inhabitants of the Antipodes have their feet directly opposite to ours, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... have helped bowing her head to that rebuke of her over-confident judgment, coming as it did from one who in the same breath appealed to that judgment as final? Ratcliffe, too, had a curious instinct for human weaknesses. No magnetic needle was ever truer than his finger when he touched the vulnerable spot in an opponent's mind. Mrs. Lee was not to be reached by an appeal to religious sentiment, to ambition, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... to be seen rising from two hundred to three hundred feet above the water's edge; northward along the shore porphyry abounds in great quantity. This point is noted for the singular agitation of the magnetic needle. Hiawatha, Grand Portage, Pigeon Bay, Pie Island, Thunder Cape, and Thunder Bay, surrounded by grand scenery; Isle Royale, Fort William, a strong post of the Hudson Bay Company. Black Bay, Nepigon Bay, on the extreme north ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... remained between him and that street which appeared to attract him his pace slackened, to such a degree that, at times, one might have thought that he was no longer advancing at all. The vacillation of his head and the fixity of his eyeballs suggested the thought of the magnetic needle seeking the pole. Whatever time he spent on arriving, he was obliged to arrive at last; he reached the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; then he halted, he trembled, he thrust his head with a sort of melancholy ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... better brain than usual, for when the whirl came to an end, it always found his pointing like the magnetic needle to the north. It had been Master Joseph's plan to pretend a good deal of earnestness in the struggle which he was certain would come in this place; but he was pleased to find that there was no need of any pretence ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... with the compass had shown the magnetic needle to differ from itself sometimes as much as six, and even seven degrees, in or very near the same place, and the differences appeared to be subject to regular laws; but it was so extraordinary in the present advanced state of navigation, that they should not have been before discovered ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... describe a big loop, I had left it three days before, seeing plainly by the conformation of the country that we should strike it again sooner or later. We were marching once more by compass. My men, who had no faith whatever in the magnetic needle, were again almost paralysed with fear that we might not encounter the stream again. A thousand times a day they accused me of foolishness in leaving the river, as they said it would have been better ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor |
