"Focal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 magnifying ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... fallen state of being; for therein is no inverted image of God, no escape from the focal radiation of the infinite. Hence the unreality of error, and the truth of the Scripture, that there is "none beside Him." If mortals could grasp these two words all and nothing, this mystery of a God who has no knowledge of sin would disappear, and the eternal, infinite harmony would be ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... and for some decades of years it will continue to be, the necessary chief focal point of our nation. But, in all respects, it is not the true heart. In its composition and dealings, it is almost as much foreign as American. Located on our eastern border, fronting the most commercial and the richest transatlantic nations, and of easy access to extensive ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... 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 we ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... for enlargements 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
... 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 far towards ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and that it was from that kingdom that Galileo derived the knowledge of its existence. In considering the contending claims, which have been urged with all the ardour and partiality of national feeling, it has been generally overlooked, that a single convex lens, whose focal length exceeds the distance at which we examine minute objects, performs the part of a telescope, when an eye, placed behind it, sees distinctly the inverted image which it forms. A lens, twenty feet in focal length, will in this manner magnify twenty times; and it was by the ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... is situated, and can demonstrate it anatomically and physiologically. But we have only analogy to lead us to infer the possible or even probable existence of an insensible spot in the thinking-centre. If there is a focal point where consciousness is at its highest development, it would not be strange if near by there should prove to be an anaesthetic district or limited space where no report from the senses was intelligently interpreted. But all this is ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sold, a Second-hand Achromatic Portrait Lens by Lerebour, 2-1/4 aperture, 7 inches focal length. Price ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... 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
... it if we win a 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 rejoicing ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... while he swam unsupported in an ethereal void of brilliance. His mouth was full of something that burned, a liquid hot, acrid, and stinging. He gulped, swallowed, slobbered, choked, coughed, attempted to sit up, was aware that he was the focal center of a ring of glaring, burning eyes, like eyes of ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... 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 Kings, in passing Reform ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • 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 Portraits.—The ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 pathological state of the organism would interfere with or altogether prevent ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... believe that it is the 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 state has been attained, ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... back, ran up the steps of the porch and found momentary safety in the darkness of its heavy vines. But this he knew could not last. Running figures were converging toward him at a focal point. He could hear oaths and cries. Some one was throwing aimless shots from a ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... 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; ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... 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 ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... in Michael Phelan's being was concentrated in his eyes at that moment and it is highly doubtful if he would have heard a fife and drum corps in full blare enter the kitchen. He heard nothing and saw nothing below that upward focal angle. ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... joy, 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 of ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... perpetually in earnest, perpetually in a hurry. To the others, her energy was amusing and, at times, a little wearing. They liked better to spend long hours on the beach, where their awning soon became a focal point for the fun of the bathing hour; they loved to roam over the moors, to sit down now and then on their own broad piazzas and glance from book to sea and from sea to book again with the curious indifference to time and literature which is ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... can perfectly well describe the facts in the phenomenal terms which are their favorites. For them the soul is only a succession of fields of consciousness: yet there is found in each field a part, or sub-field, which figures as focal and contains the excitement, and from which, as from a centre, the aim seems to be taken. Talking of this part, we involuntarily apply words of perspective to distinguish it from the rest, words like "here," "this," ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... touches a life just entering maturity at the focal point toward which all nurture has been tending. Enriched by years of absorption, with ideals defined and channels of expression traced, the soul faces an open door, bearing the inscript "Service." It is that each soul may enter the door and give back to a waiting world its best, that ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... came, also, into Greece some knowledge of the sciences of astronomy and geometry, of architecture and mechanics, of medicine and chemistry; together with the mystic wisdom of the distant Orient. The scattered rays of light which gleamed in the eastern skies were thus converged in Greece, as on a focal point, to be rendered more brilliant by contact with the powerful Grecian intellect, and then diffused throughout the western world. Thus intercourse with surrounding nations, by commerce and travel, contact therewith by immigrations and colonizations, even collisions and ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the 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 gave a solution ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... actual apparatus the sphere is an ordinary round-bottomed flask about 95 mm. in diameter, and the lens a simple double convex lens of about 90 mm. focal length. The sensitive paper employed is the ordinary ferro-prussiate now so much used by engineers for copying tracings. This was selected in consequence of the ease with which the impression is fixed, for the paper merely requires to be washed in a stream of water for six minutes, no chemicals ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... 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, it is impossible, unless we forget this Saviour, and lose sight of that cross ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... 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, ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... 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 an ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that 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)
... 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 ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... and faith. All great truth comes down; it does not rise up. All great 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 that have redeemed the race from its servitudes and bestialities, ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... of a loss; the power of obtaining good and pleasing likenesses appears to me decidedly increased, the facility of subsequent enlargement permitting them to be taken sufficiently small, at a sufficient distance (and therefore with greater rapidity and certainty) {61} to avoid all the focal distortion so much complained of,—while the due enlargement of a portrait taken on glass has the effect, moreover, of depriving it of that hardness of outline so objectionable in a collodion portrait, giving it more artistic effect, and this without ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... has 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 is a very ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne |
