Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Mechanics   Listen
noun
Mechanics  n.  That science, or branch of applied mathematics, which treats of the action of forces on bodies. Note: That part of mechanics which considers the action of forces in producing rest or equilibrium is called statics; that which relates to such action in producing motion is called dynamics. The term mechanics includes the action of forces on all bodies, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous. It is sometimes, however, and formerly was often, used distinctively of solid bodies only: The mechanics of liquid bodies is called also hydrostatics, or hydrodynamics, according as the laws of rest or of motion are considered. The mechanics of gaseous bodies is called also pneumatics. The mechanics of fluids in motion, with special reference to the methods of obtaining from them useful results, constitutes hydraulics.
Animal mechanics (Physiol.), that portion of physiology which has for its object the investigation of the laws of equilibrium and motion in the animal body. The most important mechanical principle is that of the lever, the bones forming the arms of the levers, the contractile muscles the power, the joints the fulcra or points of support, while the weight of the body or of the individual limbs constitutes the weight or resistance.
Applied mechanics, the principles of abstract mechanics applied to human art; also, the practical application of the laws of matter and motion to the construction of machines and structures of all kinds.
orbital mechanics, the principles governing the motion of bodies in orbit around other bodies under gravitational influence, such as artificial Earth satellites.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Mechanics" Quotes from Famous Books



... instead of money; for, in terror, each endeavoured to appear generous. No means of obtaining a rich harvest were neglected; for instance, Ali distributed secretly large sums among poor and obscure people, such as servants, mechanics, and soldiers, in order that by returning them in public they might appear to be making great sacrifices, so that richer and more distinguished persons could not, without appearing ill-disposed towards the pacha, offer only the same amount ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... the highest concern. The enlarged participation of our people in the carrying trade, the new and increased markets that will be opened for the products of our farms and factories, and the fuller and better employment of our mechanics which will result from a liberal promotion of our foreign commerce insure the widest possible diffusion of benefit to all the States and to all our people. Everything is most propitious for the present ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... machines, the extraordinary complexity and ingenuity of whose construction excited great admiration in America and Europe, is one for making paper bags. Many men, leading mechanics among them, had until then vainly sought to construct such a machine. A woman, Miss Maggie Knight, invented it. Since then, the lady invented also a machine to fold paper bags, that does the work of 30 persons. She herself ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... booksellers, among them Henry Knox, imported into the colony all the standard books on law, politics, history and theology, while a free press and town meetings instructed her citizens in political affairs. Her mechanics, many of whom were ship-builders, were active in all town meetings. Ever jealous of her rights, she had grown up in their habitual exercise, and was early and strenuous in her opposition to the claims of parliamentary supremacy. Even her divines, many of whom were distinguished by their learning ...
— Tea Leaves • Various

... mechanics; revolution by gravitation demonstrably impossible; much to be said for the earth being the immovable center. A good analysis of contents at the beginning, a thing seldom found. The author has followed up ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... He put all his mechanics to work and built a great man out of cast-iron, with machinery inside of him. When he was wound up the Cast-iron Man could roar, and roll his eyes, and gnash his teeth and march across the Valley, crushing trees and houses ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum

... partiality; but it is not so. Examine that child as a stranger, and it will startle yourself. You stand amazed at its eager curiosity, its quick comprehension, its ready wit, its delicate perception. Often, too, you will find some faculty strikingly developed. The child will have a turn for mechanics, perhaps, and make you a model of a steamboat; or it will have an ear tuned to verse, and will write you a poem like that it has got by heart from 'The Speaker;' or it will take to botany (like Pisistratus), ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of our twenty-five years' work at Snow Hill, we have about one thousand graduates and ex-students who have either finished the full or partial course at the institution and are now out in the world doing creditable work as teachers, farmers, mechanics, and domestic workers. Over fifty per cent of our students have bought homes since leaving school. Many have houses with five and six rooms. Wherever a Snow Hill student teaches the school term is lengthened and the people ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards

... this higher mathematics. Would it not be better to give a single course called mathematics rather than these successive subjects? Would it not be more enlightening if each new mathematical principle were taught through a situation in building, engineering, or mechanics so that the student would at all times see the intimate relation between mathematical law and physical forces? Would not the disciplinary values of mathematics be intensified for the student by teaching it in a way that presents a ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... down came the wooden frontage. It was a part of the mechanics intrusted to the docile and intelligent Chieftain that so soon as the woodwork had dropped he, counterfeiting an unappeasable bloodthirstiness, should fling himself headlong against the straining ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... mouth of the Amazon River." He then appealed to his own people to "cast down their buckets where they were" by making friends with their white neighbors in every manly way, by training themselves where they were in agriculture, in mechanics, in commerce, instead of trying to better their condition by migration. And finally to the Southern white people he appealed "to cast down their buckets where they were" by using and training the Negroes whom ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... said he. "We'll teach you the mechanics of expressing every variety of emotion. Then we'll be ready to study ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... one kind to something quite distinct, without taking into the account the difference in the nature of the things, or attending to the difference of the results. For most persons, finding what wonderful advances have been made in biblical criticism, in chemistry, in mechanics, in geometry, astronomy, &c. i.e. in things depending on mere inquiry and experiment, or on absolute demonstration, have been led hastily to conclude, that there was a general tendency in the ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... shillings a week, it will be seen that the artisan, whose necessary outlay for food and lodging need certainly not exceed seven shillings, is at least in as good a position as his self-vaunted brother of London upon thirty shillings. It naturally results that the mechanics of Berlin, unlike those of the smaller towns of Germany, "are married and given in marriage," although the practice is regarded even there as indiscreet and improvident. It is doubtless a creditable feeling which demands of the workman that he shall have past out of his state of servitude, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... few years of leisured ease. It is a place for workers, and not at all for those who merely wish to be able to boast that they attended a university. The students have come largely from among railroad clerks, bank clerks, bookkeepers, teachers, preachers, mechanics, salesmen, drug clerks, city and United States government employees, widows, nurses, housekeepers, brakemen, firemen, engineers, motormen, conductors, and ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell

... nothing. He belonged to the lower classes—that is, the useful people. England depended for her prosperity upon her mechanics and her thinkers, her sailors and her workers, and they are the only men in Europe who are not gentlemen. The only obstacles in the way of progress in Europe were the nobility and the priests, and they ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... there are two tolerably distinct classes: the one comprising farmers, mechanics, and indeed all those who calculate on obtaining a subsistence by manual industry; the other is composed of professional men, tradesmen, and adventurers of every description. Towards the first class our attention is now directed, premising ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... on the hills behind Liege befell Fort Des Sarts outside of Maubeuge, as I have reason to know. When the first of the 42-centimeters emerged from Essen it took a team of thirty horses to haul it; and with it out of that nest of the Prussian war eagle came also a force of mechanics and engineers to set it up and aim it ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... is a great law which runs through life; one of those laws of nature—call them, rather, laws of God—which apply not merely to political economy, to commerce, and to mechanics; but to physiology, to society; to the intellect, to the heart, of every ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... must be exactly as many distinguishable parts as in the situation that it represents. The two must possess the same logical (mathematical) multiplicity. (Compare Hertz's Mechanics on dynamical models.) ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein

... less lustre upon me than the honour I receive from such a father: And, since his honourable exploits made him stand in no need of the wealth of predecessors, who though poor were not destitute of virtue, he ought from his name and worth to have been raised by authors above the rank of mechanics or peasants. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... of the joinery-work, could we have prettier mechanics than Sir James GRAHAM and Sir Edward KNATCHBULL? When we remember their opinions on the Corn Laws, and see that they are a part of the cabinet which has already shown symptoms of some approaching alteration ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various

... almost exclusively drawn from the aristocratic end of the party. It was Harvard and Beacon Hill that revolted. To make good the loss the Republican leaders had to appeal for support to the same class of voters which gave to Republican principles their first triumphs,—the intelligent mechanics and artisans, the laboring men. However many or few of the deserters of 1884 may re-join the standard now that Mr. Blaine is defeated it is not likely that for many years to come, if ever, the Republican party in Massachusetts ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... theoretical origin goes, the Pope is the most democratic of sovereigns; for there is nothing to prevent his being taken from any rank or order of the faithful. The sons of peasants and mechanics have sat upon the Papal throne, and the thunderbolts of the Vatican have been launched by hands familiar with the pruning-knife and the plough. But in practice these bounds were effectually narrowed, when the college of cardinals tacitly restricted the choice to the members of their own ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... in the city, etc., tradesmen and mechanics, were, as I have said before, out of employ; and this occasioned the putting off and dismissing an innumerable number of journeymen and workmen of all sorts, seeing nothing was done relating to such trades but what might be said ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe

... the day; and we set off together. There are three excellent rooms engaged by the good people of Wigan for the employment and teaching of the young women thrown out of work at the cotton mills. The most central of the three is the lecture theatre of the Mechanics' Institution. This room was the first place we visited. Ten o'clock is the time appointed for the young women to assemble. It was a few minutes past ten when we got to the place; and there were some twenty of the girls waiting about the door. They were barred ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh

... boys of fifteen. They reached our neighborhood in July, arriving like a flight of alien unclean birds, and vanished into the north in September as mysteriously as they had appeared. A few of them had been soldiers, others were the errant sons of the poor farmers and rough mechanics of older States, migrating for the adventure of it. One of them gave his name as "Harry Lee," others were known by such names as "Big Ed" or "Shorty." Some carried valises, others had nothing but small bundles containing a clean shirt and a ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... had no head for mechanics, but Overholt had already made an invention which was considered very successful, though he had got little or nothing for it. The mechanic who had helped him in its construction had stolen his principal idea ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford

... like the money. That extra coming in would mean books—I'm crazy about reading, and so is Henry—and theaters and lots of things we can't afford now. But that isn't all. Henry don't want to be a shipping-clerk all his life. He's crazy about mechanics and that kind of stuff. But the books that he needs cost a lot. Don't you suppose I'd be proud to feel that the extra money I'd earned would lift him up where he could have a chance to be something! But Henry is dead set against it. He says he is the one that's going ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber

... Mankind!—One Man may steal a Horse, better than another look over a Hedge.—Of all Mechanics, of all servile Handicrafts-men, a Gamester is the vilest. But yet, as many of the Quality are of the Profession, he is admitted amongst the politest Company. I wonder we are not ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay

... that the German garrison at Tsing-tau, which surrendered to the Japanese and British on November 7, included five battalions of infantry, fire battalions of marine artillery, one battalion of mechanics, and about 2500 reservists. After the surrender of the garrison a number of German soldiers are said to have escaped in native boats, but were recaptured. The defences were under naval control. Tsing-tau was strongly fortified and had about 600 Krupp guns of various calibre. The photographs ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914 • Various

... politics did not exhaust the interests of this strong and eager mind. He was a good chess-player, and followed with lively curiosity the new developments in mechanics and aviation. Very fond of dogs, between him and our little fox-terrier there was a tie of deep affection. As indicative of the catholicity of his tastes I may mention that, going over his papers after his death, I discovered ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... ahead. Two mechanics had come up to steady the wings for the initial ten or fifteen feet of the motorless craft's passage over the ground behind the ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... lower classes of the population. Amongst those who like the Julhais have moved northward from the older urban area are the Sidis or Musulmans of African descent, who supply the steamship companies with stokers, firemen and engine-room assistants, and the dockyards and workshops with fitters and mechanics. A hardy race they are, with their muscular frames, thick lips and crisp black hair—the very last men you would wish to meet in a rough-and-tumble, and yet withal a jovial people, well-disposed and hospitable to anyone whom they regard as a friend. If they ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... knowledge of geography, architecture, painting, sculpture, or even mechanics; they no longer make translations from the Arabic or create fiction, and the old translations of works on law, ethics, and science are now scarcely studied. Education among them is at a very low ebb; but the State of Kedah is beginning to awake to its advantages. Where ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... drew towards them the questionings of the intellect, and accordingly astronomy was the first science developed. Slowly, and with difficulty, the notion of natural forces took root in the human mind. Slowly, and with difficulty, the science of mechanics had to grow out of this notion; and slowly at last came the full application of mechanical principles to the motions of the heavenly bodies. We trace the progress of astronomy through Hipparchus and Ptolemy; and, after a long halt, through ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... Flemish stolidity! I do believe he and his ancestors have gone on in the same way, and with almost the same machinery, ever since Queen Elizabeth's time. Now, just one or two of our modern improvements, such as—but I forget, you never could understand mechanics." ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... them; and as of all their institutions he was most pleased with their distinguishing the military men from the rest of the people, he took the same method at Sparta, and, by separating from these the mechanics and artificers, he rendered the constitution more noble and more of a piece. This assertion of the Egyptians is confirmed by some of the Greek writers. But we know of no one, except Aristocrates, son of Hipparchus, and a Spartan, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... eighty dollars; and if they furnish their shop and tools, an additional sum of one hundred and twenty dollars; and their assistants shall be allowed an annual compensation of two hundred and forty dollars. And wherever farmers, mechanics, or teachers are required by treaty stipulations to be provided, they shall be employed under the direction of the War Department, and shall receive an annual compensation of not less than four hundred and eighty dollars, nor more than six ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... man had collected his teaching mechanics again, and he had them all into the prison the moment Hawes was out. He could not get the cranks condemned as monsters—the day was not yet come for that; so he got them condemned as liars, and in their place tasks of rational and productive labor ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... sufficient; in case of a long journey the train consists of a buffer carriage in addition, with two saloon cars for the suite and two wagons for the luggage. The train is always accompanied by a high official of the railway, who, with mechanics and spare guard, is in direct telephonic communication with the engine-driver and guard. The carriages are coloured alike, ivory-white above the window-line and ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... commodious cabin aft. The deck space between was clear, except for the hatchway leading down to the engine. The planking was clean, as though newly scrubbed, while every handrail glistened in the sun. The cabin appeared tightly closed, even the windows being heavily draped. Some mechanics were evidently working below; there was a sound of hammering, and occasionally a fellow in overalls appeared at the hatch opening. No one wearing any semblance of a yacht uniform was visible, although four or five men lounged about the deck, or close at hand ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish

... telescope. It is not a difficult matter when you once accept the principle, and the principle can be extended to cavalry and infantry just as well. It will be a great thing for the nations that are best at mechanics, and ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby

... enthusiasm this was rather a relief to him. She looked like a boy, and not even like a good boy. It was evident that if she had been a boy, she would have "cut" school, to try private experiments in mechanics or to make researches in natural history. It was true that if she had been a boy she would have borne some relation to a girl, whereas Doctor Prance appeared to bear none whatever. Except her intelligent eye, she had no features to speak of. Ransom asked her if she were ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... believe, very widely diffused among them.' Johnson's Works, ix. 158. Lord Shelburne said that the Earl of Bute had 'a great deal of superficial knowledge, such as is commonly to be met with in France and Scotland, chiefly upon matters of natural philosophy, mines, fossils, a smattering of mechanics, a little metaphysics, and a very false taste in everything.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, i. 139. 'A gentleman who had heard that Bentley was born in the north, said to Porson: "Wasn't he a Scotchman?" "No, Sir," replied Porson, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... the colonists, whose toil is compulsory, a continual and regular occupation of an almost unvarying character. (This applies equally to the case of a penal colony.) Workmen, foremen, engineers, builders, mechanics, gardeners,—all are patients, with the exception of the Director, the doctor, and about a hundred mounted warders, who pass rapidly from one part to another and are able to intervene in suicidal ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... durch einige Deutsche Provinzen, von Hollenberg. Stendal, 1782. 8vo.—Architecture and mechanics are the topics ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... a month after the conversation which we have just detailed between the two brothers, the following conversation took place among that class of the mechanics whom we shall ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... Tsze-hsia said, 'There are learning extensively, and having a firm and sincere aim; inquiring with earnestness, and reflecting with self-application:— virtue is in such a course.' CHAP. VII. Tsze-hsia said, 'Mechanics have their shops to dwell in, in order to accomplish their works. The superior man learns, in order to reach to the utmost of ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge

... entirely ignorant of any thing. He must be superficially, if I may so say, omniscient. He is to know something of pneumatics; of chemistry; of whatever is curious, or proper to excite the attention of the youthful mind; an insight into mechanics is desirable, with a touch of statistics; the quality of soils, &c. botany, the constitution of his country, cum multis aliis. You may get a notion of some part of his expected duties by consulting the famous Tractate on Education ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... was lost to view. Then, after a time, I saw him emerge again from those immensities of space. He came down in one long majestic sweep, and alighted in a field a little way away from the house, leaving the aeroplane for his mechanics to fetch up presently. ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various

... truth, I had so cloaked my meaning, that, without my explanation, it would have been difficult for any one to have discovered it. But it was not alone in poetry that I excelled. I had a great turn for mechanics, and several of my inventions were much admired at court. I contrived a wheel for perpetual motion, which only wants one little addition to make it go round for ever. I made different sorts of coloured paper; I invented a new sort of ink-stand; and was on the high road to making cloth, when ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... his family, accompanied by a carpenter and blacksmith, both pious young men. He reached Tonga in safety, and remained for upwards of a year, gaining the language of the people, and protected by the chiefs, but without making any converts. On his return to Sydney he left the two young mechanics, and they were afterwards joined by the Reverend John Thomas, a young ardent missionary from England. They had indeed need of faith and patience. The chiefs who at first protected them proved themselves fickle and treacherous, robbing them of all they possessed, and it was evident that they ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston

... certain trade questions by a young Oxford economist. For the firm of Grieve & Co., of Manchester, had made itself widely known for some five years past to the intelligence of northern England by its large and increasing trade in pamphlets of a political, social, or economical kind. They supplied mechanics' institutes, political associations, and workmen's clubs; nay, more, they had a system of hawkers of their own, which bade fair to extend largely. To be taken up by Grieve & Co. was already an object to young politicians, inventors, or social reformers, who ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... so, returned the purse, and Miss Peppy rushed to the train and leaped into the first open door. It happened to be that of a third class, which was full of navvies and mechanics. ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne

... Scotland called a bunker). I said to Mrs. Lupton, 'Look out of the window,' and she said, 'Here is the plot of grass.' I then said, 'Look into the other rooms,' and she replied, 'Yes, they are as you said.' My colleague, Mr. J. Johnson, said, 'We preach in the Mechanics' Institution Hall, North Hanover Street, George Street, and you will have to preach there in the morning.' Well, morning came; and, accompanied by Mr. Johnson, I found the place. The entrance was as I had seen in my dream. But we entered the hall by the right; there was the ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead

... to make a little serious literary study take precedence of science. You were expected to be familiar with the great minds of antiquity, to converse with Horace and Virgil, Theocritus and Plato, before touching the poisons of chemistry or the levers of mechanics. The niceties of thought could only be the gainers by these preparations. Life's exigencies, ever harsher as progress afflicts us with its increasing needs, have changed all that. A fig for correct language! Business ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... mechanics, and practical life, throw overboard men and things of the past, so should we in theology, Church life, and experience, when we can do better. Reverence for persons, and respect for ideas, should not enslave us. ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... without regard for any." There was a general enthusiasm; the place of meeting for the army was appointed at Chalons-sur-Marne, March 10, 1552; more than a thousand gentlemen flocked thither as volunteers; peasants and mechanics from Champagne and Picardy joined them; the war was popular. "The majority of the soldiers," says Rabutin, a contemporary chronicler, "were young men whose brains were on fire." Francis de Guise and Gaspard de ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... of our personal acquaintance, we can number some few, who, with souls more elevated and spiritually refined by grace, have bestowed in benefactions all their income; peradventure, even common farmers and mechanics—such as have fallen under the notice of the writer—who, after frugally supplying the wants of their families, have generously given the remaining proceeds of their ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark

... If I wanted to instill the love of nature into a child's heart, I should do it, in the first place, through country life, and, in the next place, through the best literature, rather than through classroom investigations, or through books of facts about the mere mechanics of nature. Biology is all right for the few who wish to specialize in that branch, but for the mass of pupils, it is a waste of time. Love of nature cannot be commanded or taught, but in some minds it can ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... habit of physical exertion to productive ends. Skill was developed. Skilled labor, which needs brains, was carried to a high degree of performance. On almost all the Southern plantations, and in the cities also, negro mechanics were bred, excellent blacksmiths, good carpenters, and house-builders capable of executing plans of high architectural merit. Everywhere were negroes skilled in trades, and competent in various ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... to visiting places in the neighbourhood. As regards the lower classes, I do not think there is in any of Her Majesty's possessions, a greater amount of mechanical genius and enterprise than amongst the mechanics of South Australia. I speak confidently on this head, since I have had very many points referred to me, which have long satisfied me ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... nation is wonderful in science and mechanical invention. It was the aim of Sam Walter Foss to immortalize the age of steel. "Harness all your rivers above the cataracts' brink, and then unharness man." He told me he thought the subject of mechanics was as poetical as the song of the lark. "The Cosmos wrought for a billion years to make glad for a day," reminds us of the ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... hoped for; but, knowing something of the elaborate organization of the opium group, he recognized that he owed some part of his information to the sense of security which this admirably conducted machine inspired in its mechanics. The introduction from Sir Brian Malpas had worked wonders, without doubt; and his own intimate knowledge of the establishment adjoining the Boulevard Beaumarchais, far from arousing the suspicions of Gianapolis, ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... object in life. Education was considered by their founders as merely a step to making money. Science became a trade—a mere handmaid to art. Mammon was all in all. Their instruction was entirely utilitarian. Mechanics and Medicine, Hydraulics and Chemistry, Pneumatics and Hydrostatics, Anatomy and Physiology, constituted the grand staples of their education. What they taught was adapted only for professional students. One would suppose, from examining their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... interrogation of Nature. The essential characteristics of their method are experiment and observation. Geometry and the mathematical sciences they looked upon as instruments of reasoning. In their numerous writings on mechanics, hydrostatics, optics, it is interesting to remark that the solution of a problem is always obtained by performing an experiment, or by an instrumental observation. It was this that made them the originators of chemistry, that led them to the invention of all kinds of apparatus ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... knowledge of fortress artillery Brocq had been requested to put the finishing touches to a confidential report on the defences of the eastern forts of Paris and the distribution of the effective forces of the companies of mechanics in time of mobilisation. He had searched feverishly in his drawers for this report, which was of no great bulk. For the last ten minutes he had anxiously searched, but in vain: he could not find a trace ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... the aforesaid analogy or natural Science will be easily acknowledged to be a certain celebrated Treatise of Mechanics. In the entrance of which justly admired treatise, Time, Space, and Motion are distinguished into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and vulgar; which distinction, as it is at large explained by the author, does suppose ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley

... at once confessed that he had no knowledge or taste for mechanics, but he had the patience and good-nature to walk up and down this stone platform for three-quarters of an hour. He stood observing my mother's very eager examination with my father of the defects ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... he could not compete with machinery. John Rich of Bristol was in the business; also Levi Lewis, but gave it up in a few years. An Ives family in Bristol were quite conspicuous as clock-makers. They were good mechanics. One of them, Joseph Ives, has done a great deal towards improving the eight day brass clock, which ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome

... engine in front of him woke into life deafeningly and, waving away the mechanics holding the wings, he pressed the clutch pedal and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various

... or absolute system of units, called the C. G. S. system. It embraces units of size, weight, time, in mechanics, physics, electricity and other branches. It is also called the absolute system of units. It admits of the formation of new units as required by increased scope or classification. The following are basic units of the ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... Walk. In man and his allies, the vertebrates, the process of walking is a most difficult and apparently dangerous feat. To describe the mechanics of walking, the wonderful adaptation of the muscles and bones for the performance of this most ordinary action of life, would require a volume. The process is scarcely less complex in insects. Lyonnet found 3,993 muscles in a caterpillar, and while a large ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard

... be nothing finer than Emerson's knowledge of the world, his sympathy with young men and with the practical difficulties of applying his teachings. We can see in his early lectures before students and mechanics how much he had learned about the structure of society from his own short contact with ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... excellent mathematicians, and arrived to a great perfection in mechanics, by the countenance and encouragement of the emperor, who is a renowned patron of learning. This prince has several machines fixed on wheels, for the carriage of trees, and other great weights. He often builds his largest men-of-war, whereof some are nine feet long, in the woods, where ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... discourse, while it equally entered into his observations upon the most abstract sciences, on which he talked most perspicuously; the affairs of government, politics, finance, justice, war, the court, ordinary conversation, the arts, and mechanics. He could speak as well too upon history and memoirs, and was well acquainted with pedigrees. The personages of former days were familiar to him; and the intrigues of the ancient courts were to him as those of his own time. To hear him, you would have ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... refused to join his brother, as in his opinion there was not room for two at the establishment of the Boulevard de Grenelle. Indeed, Denis's ambition was to direct some huge works by himself; he possessed an extensive knowledge of mechanics, and this it was that rendered him a valuable adviser whenever a new model of some important agricultural machine had to be prepared at the Beauchene factory. Constance promptly dismissed him from her thoughts; in her estimation there was ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... the stock gambling of California Street. Every one is mad. Servants, lawyers, hod carriers, merchants, old maids, widows, mechanics, sly wives, thieving clerks, and the "demi-monde," all throng to the portals of the "Big Board." It is a money-mania. Beauty, old age, callow boyhood, fading manhood, all chase the bubble ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... for our records, and our miners are blasting out space in which to put away the record of our actions to the last possible moment. It will be sandproof. Our mechanics are building a broadcast unit we'll spare a tiny bit of fuel for. It will run twenty-odd years, broadcasting directions so it can be found regardless of how the terrain ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... lighted with pleasure. Not only was he the oldest boy in the wireless patrol, and Captain Hardy's first lieutenant, but he was one of those natural mechanics who seem to know instinctively how to handle tools and make things. Indeed he had constructed his own wireless outfit and shown his fellows how to make theirs; and he could repair a motor-cycle almost as skilfully as a garage man. So it was natural ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... Mechanics Agriculture Chemical Science Gardening Botany Domestic Economy Zoology Useful and Ornamental Art Geology Geographical ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various

... the Close Gate would not have disgraced a curate, the rent representing a higher percentage on his wages than mechanics of any sort usually care to pay. His combined bed and sitting-room was furnished with framed photographs of the rectories and deaneries at which his landlady had lived as trusted servant in her time, and the parlour downstairs bore a clock on the mantelpiece inscribed to the effect ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... observe, during the Rehearsal all the Actors and Actresses and even the Mechanics on the stage clustering round while these lines were repeating just as if it had been a favourite strain of Music. But from want of depth and volume of voice in Rae, they did not produce an equal effect on the Public till after the Publication—and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... achievement in mechanics was announced to the public, and his model opened for exhibition. Free tickets were sent to editors, and liberal advertisements inserted in their papers. The gentlemen of the press examined the machine, and pretty generally pronounced it a very singular affair certainly, and, as far ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... an art. The Professor took the old practices and studied them, worked out their mechanical principles, and then devised a graded scientific set of exercises. The system is really not a lot of tricks, but is based on the elementary laws of mechanics, a study of the equilibrium of the human body, the ways in which it is disturbed, how to recover your own and take advantage of the shiftings of the center of gravity of the other person. The first thing that is taught is how to fall down without being hurt, that alone is worth the price of ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey

... with spirits who were from that earth concerning various things on our Earth, especially concerning the fact that sciences are cultivated here, which are not cultivated elsewhere, such as astronomy, geometry, mechanics, physics, chemistry, medicine, optics, and natural philosophy; and likewise arts, which are unknown elsewhere, as the arts of ship-building, of smelting metals, of writing on paper, and likewise of publishing by printing, and thus of communicating with others on the ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg

... the other in spending the moderate fines arising from non-attendance, on books, instead of liquor. Here, too, Burns was the president, and the members were chiefly the sons of husbandmen, whom he found, he said, more natural in their manners, and more agreeable than the self-sufficient mechanics of villages and towns, who were ready to dispute on all topics, and inclined to be convinced on none. This club had the pleasure of subscribing for the first edition of the works of its great associate. It has been questioned by his first biographer, whether the refinement ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... they can for their race, and wisely he is doing for the "rising generation" a work which, for him, is "a work of love." Aiming to benefit our youth, through history, science, philosophy, geography, mechanics, etc., in a manner easily comprehended, he has made his journal the efficient instrument of his noble purpose. Could he see the anxiety on the faces of his young friends awaiting the arrival of Golden Days by the mail or the news agent, he would feel that his ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various

... the Israeli quantum and wave-mechanics man, his heaping dinner plate an affront to the Laws of Moses, his white hair a fluffy, tangled chaos, laughing at an impassively-delivered joke the English knight ...
— The Mercenaries • Henry Beam Piper

... feeling which disposes many masters in easy circumstances to liberate some of their slaves, the habit of keeping a multitude of blacks for domestic service, the attachments which arise from this intercourse with the whites, the facility with which slaves who are mechanics accumulate money, and pay their masters a certain sum daily, in order to work on their own account—such are the principal causes which in the towns convert so many slaves into free men of colour. I ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt

... more. *30 This account is not confirmed, as far as I have seen, by any other writer. But however it may be exaggerated, it is certain that Cuzco was the metropolis of a great empire, the residence of the Court and the chief nobility; frequented by the most skilful mechanics and artisans of every description, who found a demand for their ingenuity in the royal precincts; while the place was garrisoned by a numerous soldiery, and was the resort, finally, of emigrants from the most distant provinces. The quarters whence this motley population came ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... Germans in white suits with pencils stuck in their sun helmets and wearing amber-coloured spectacles. British clerks with cargo lists, customs brokers, barking mates with blasphemous vocabularies, Scotch mechanics with parched throats, and all the underlings who have to do with ships and ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore

... consideration of simian mental traits of very different character. Another male orang, named Dohong, of the same age and intellectual caste as Rajah, developed a faculty for mechanics and invention which not only challenged our admiration, but also created much work for our carpenters. He discovered, or invented, as you please, the lever as a mechanical force,—as fairly and squarely as Archimedes discovered the principle of the screw. Moreover, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... physical discoveries of recent date had hardly escaped beyond academic circles. But an interest in these subjects began to become the fashion in the later years of Louis XIV. Science was talked in the salons; ladies studied mechanics and anatomy. Moliere's play, Les Femmes savantes, which appeared in 1672, is one of the first indications. In 1686 Fontenelle published his Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, in which a savant explains the new astronomy to a lady in ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... Richards; don't you remember, sir? I was one of the boys you used to teach at the Sunday-school. It gave me a turn for mechanics, which I followed up; and that's how I took to this trade. I'm a master mason now, sir; and the whole of ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... letter I have already mentioned the heterogeneous composition of the Senate. The tribunate and legislative corps are worthy to figure by its side; their members are also ci-devant mechanics of all descriptions, debased attorneys or apostate priests, national spoilers or rebellious regicides, degraded nobles or dishonoured officers. The nearly unanimous vote of these corps for a consulate for life, and for an hereditary Emperor, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... appealed strongly. He found himself more honestly attracted to this than to the writing of his literary letter, his editorials, or his book reviewing, of which he was now doing a good deal. He determined to follow where his bent led; he studied the mechanics of unusual advertisements wherever he saw them; he eagerly sought a knowledge of typography and its best handling in an advertisement, and of the value and relation of illustrations to text. He perceived that his work along these lines ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... Leperos, which, literally translated, means lepers, is the term applied to the homeless and houseless wretches who are to be seen wandering by thousands about the city and suburbs of Mexico. They consist of beggars, mechanics, writers, and even artists. The most industrious amongst them work one, or at most two, days in the week, and the dress of these consists of thin trousers, a sort of cloak, and a straw hat. Their dwelling is in any hole ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... he had much to learn and he had grave doubts that he was earning his salary. He knew next to nothing of mechanics and did not always understand when Jonathan or Hegner, the foreman, explained some new device for which drawings were needed. But that wrought no change ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller

... Institute of Actuaries, after analyzing the returns of Mr. Braidwood, as well as the reports in the "Mechanics' Magazine," by Mr. Baddeley, who has devoted much attention to the subject, drew up some tables of the times of the year, and hours of the day, at which fires are most frequent. It would naturally ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.

... bribery descending through a long subordination of wretches combined against the public happiness, from the prime minister surrounded by peers and officers of state to the exciseman dictating politics amidst a company of mechanics whom he debauches at the public expense, and lists in the service of his master with the taxes which he gathers.' Parl. Hist., xii. 570. See ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... sail, canvas, aileron. natation[obs3], swimming; fin, flipper, fish's tail. aerostation[obs3], aerostatics[obs3], aeronautics; balloonery[obs3]; balloon &c. 273; ballooning, aviation, airmanship; flying, flight, volitation[obs3]; wing, pinion; rocketry, space travel, astronautics, orbital mechanics, orbiting. voyage, sail, cruise, passage, circumnavigation, periplus[obs3]; headway, sternway, leeway; fairway. mariner &c. 269. flight, trip; shuttle, run, airlift. V. sail; put to sea &c. (depart) 293; take ship, get under way; set ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... that event he married a daughter of Henry K. Smith of Philadelphia. He was graduated from Yale, having prepared for that institution at Andover, where he played right tackle on the football team. As a child he showed a decided taste for mechanics. He ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... may, by some rare mischance, be overlooked, demerit has no opportunity whatever to gain distinction. Sleight of hand cannot long pass muster for skill of hand. Unswerving integrity, unimpeachable sincerity, is the lesson constantly taught by the lives of these renowned mechanics. "The great secret," says one, "is to have the courage to be honest,—a spirit to purchase the best material, and the means and disposition to do justice to it in the manufacture." Another, remonstrated with for his high charges, which were declared to be six times more than the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... my instrument, which I had brought for that purpose, nor did he ask any questions bearing upon its resemblance to my opponents' system. I was met by the single declaration that my 'invention had been published,' and in proof a copy of the London 'Mechanics' Magazine,' No. 757, for February 10, 1838, was produced, and I was told that 'in consequence of said ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... situation does not mean the hindrance of all advance in the black South, or the absence of a class of black landlords and mechanics who, in spite of disadvantages, are accumulating property and making good citizens. But it does mean that this class is not nearly so large as a fairer economic system might easily make it, that those who survive in the competition are handicapped so ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... I am sorry. I have forgotten myself so soon: what shall I do when I get into the intricacies of mathematics, physics, and mechanics to ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... pieces of poetry was easy pastime to him, but he was dull or inattentive when the schoolmaster gave him some elementary lessons in mechanics. He wrote beautifully, but was no prodigy in arithmetic. He drew trees, windmills, and pigs on the desks, and admirable portraits of the schoolmaster, Rufus, and other local worthies, on the margins of the tables ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... country, raising and oversetting her, treating her alternately like a disrespected grandmother, and like a woman anciently beloved; as a dead lump, and as a garden of seeds; reviewing prominent political men, laughing at the dwarf-giants; finally casting anchor on a Mechanics' Institute that he had recently heard of, where working men met weekly for the purpose of reading the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... "but there has been too much attention paid to the form of justice. Pleadings are the mere mechanics like printing the ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells

... are widely different from the agile swiftness which we naturally associate with a beast of prey. But an animal which exceeds an average elephant in bulk, no matter what its habits, is compelled by the laws of mechanics to the ponderous movements appropriate to its gigantic size. These movements, directed and controlled by a reptilian brain, must needs be largely automatic and instinctive. We cannot doubt indeed that the ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew

... itself always disagreeable enough; and here was ill-breeding in well- bred people, - worst of all. And I had my own private reasons for annoyance. A favourite theme with the company was the want of soldiers or generals at the North, and the impossibility that a set of mechanics and tradesmen, who knew only how to make money and keep it, should be able in chivalrous and gentlemanly exercises to cope with the Southern cavaliers, who were accustomed to sword and pistol and the use of them from their youth up. Bull Run, they said, showed what the consequence ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... mechanics. He's quite good at it ... If only he'd do what you tell him. Curtis, I said you were not to use those disc coulters for this field. I've had three smashed in two weeks. They're no earthly good for ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair

... equality resulting from a presence of the lower caste, which cannot exist where white men fill the position here occupied by the servile race. The mechanic who comes among us, employing the less intellectual labor of the African, takes the position which only a master-workman occupies where all the mechanics are white, and therefore it is that our mechanics hold their position ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis

... More mechanics and laborers had been hired, and the augmented force divided into three eight-hour shifts. All day, in sun or fog or snow, and all night, under the bluish glare of the arc-lights, the expert bridgemen toiled away upon the gaunt skeleton of the gigantic bridge, far out and above the abyss ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... my continuation. And you observe, it is not a block, nor a block-head, nor a painting, nor a bust, nor a fragment of any thing, however beautiful; but a combination of all the arts and sciences in one; painting, sculpture, music (hear him cry,) mineralogy, chemistry, mechanics (see him kick,) geography, and the use of the globes (see him nurse;) and withal, he is a perpetual motion—a time-piece that will never run down! And who wound it up? But words, Sir, are but a mouthing and a mockery. . . . WHEN a man is nearly crushed under obligations, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... house to the end of the garden had breathed that magic quality more than the Transatlantic Cable could reveal it in later life. It did not need mechanical inventions to make him see life as marvellous. His over-ruling interest was not in mechanics but in Will: the will of God had created the laws of nature and could supersede them: the will of Man could discover these laws and harness them to its purposes. Gold is where you find it and the value of science depends on the will of man: a position which may not sound so absurd in the light ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... in a moment that the Babylonian prophets made free use of their opportunities in this direction also. But before we turn from the field of astronomy, it will be well to inform ourselves as to what system the Chaldean astronomer had invented in explanation of the mechanics of the universe. Our answer to this inquiry is not quite as definite as could be desired, the vagueness of the records, no doubt, coinciding with the like vagueness in the minds of the Chaldeans themselves. So far as we can interpret the somewhat mystical ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... by Mr. Hume to be too vague, as what one man might consider an obstruction, another might not; and by Mr. Mansfield, as being deprecated by the workmen. In reply, Mr. Huskisson said, that he had no intention of acting harshly towards the operative mechanics: the object of the bill was to protect the weak against the strong; to afford to the man who chose to give his labour for a certain value that protection against the combination of large bodies to which every ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... much hard hand labour on our own and all other farms of the time. Even when very young I suspected that much might somehow be done in a better way. That is what took me into mechanics—although my mother always said that I was born a mechanic. I had a kind of workshop with odds and ends of metal for tools before I had anything else. In those days we did not have the toys of to-day; what ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... found the cargo to consist of 5,000 rat-tail files, of different sizes and descriptions. Then there were several smaller files that mechanics carry in their pockets; then again there was the flat file, in respectable numbers, that are used for cutting on either edge, and that are carried in sheathes, to prevent the mechanics from cutting their neighbours' fingers. ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown

... seem to enjoy the confidence of their prince and country, and to be invested with full authority, they have not always apt instruments. A politician, to do great things, looks for a POWER, what our workmen call a PURCHASE; and if he finds that power, in politics as in mechanics, he cannot be at a loss to apply it. In the monastic institutions, in my opinion, was found a great POWER for the mechanism of politic benevolence. There were revenues with a public direction; there were men wholly set apart and dedicated to public ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... Arkwright's all-absorbing hobby was mechanics, and first one experiment and then another was made in rapid succession. Needless to say, his business of ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson

... in this business are known among themselves under the too often abused sobriquet of "the Fancy," and assuming the garb of different mechanics, prowl about the streets, oftentimes with the proper tools in their hands, carelessly watching the movements of every dog that passes by, ready to grab him up the first fitting opportunity. The dog is then ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... century 1150-1250, expressed in Amiens Cathedral and the Works of Thomas Aquinas, as the unit from which he might measure motion down to his own time, without assuming anything as true or untrue, except relation. The movement might be studied at once in philosophy and mechanics. Setting himself to the task, he began a volume which he mentally knew as 'Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres: a Study of Thirteenth-Century Unity.' From that point he proposed to fix a position for himself, which he could label: 'The Education of Henry Adams: a Study ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... of science is descriptive formulation has probably been clear to keen analytic minds since the time of Galileo, especially to the great discoverers in astronomy, mechanics, and dynamics. But as a definitely stated conception, corrective of misunderstandings, the view of science as essentially descriptive began to make itself felt about the beginning of the last quarter of the nineteenth ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... such a doctrine? The flowers wither at its breath, the stars turn into stone; our own body grows unworthy of our spirit and sinks into a tenement for carnal senses only. The book of nature turns into a volume on mechanics, in which whatever has life is treated as a sort of anomaly; a great chasm of separation yawns between us and all that is higher than ourselves, and God becomes ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... they had beheaded the priest. A general carnage of the Mongols followed, and Juan de la Concepcion says [36] that the original intention of the Spaniards was to kill every Chinaman, but that they desisted in view of the inconvenience which would have ensued from the want of tradesmen and mechanics. Therefore they made a virtue of a necessity, and graciously pardoned in the name of His Catholic Majesty all ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... substance. It is, therefore, one of the principal instruments of civilization which man has derived from the material world. Though the most remarkable works of the architect are constructed of stone, it was wood that afforded man that early practice and experience which initiated him into the laws of mechanics and the principles of art, and carried him along gradually ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... Alexandria were engaged in widespread trade and shipping, and they counted among them artists, poets, civil officers, and mechanics. They naturally acquired Greek customs, and along with them Hellenic vices. The bacchanalia of Athens were enthusiastically imitated in Jerusalem, and, as a matter of course, in Alexandria. This point reached, Roman civilization asserted itself, and the people sought to affiliate ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... ugly, and unfortunate, when their adoration instantly terminated; for what is more ungenteel than age, ugliness, and misfortune! The beau-ideal with those of the lower classes, with peasants and mechanics, is some flourishing railroad contractor—look, for example, how they worship Mr. Flamson. {330} This person makes his grand debut in the year '39, at a public meeting in the principal room of a country inn. He has come into the neighbourhood ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... assignees the exclusive right to make, use, or license others to use, the described improvement in the method of effecting rotary motion directly from the alternate rectilinear motion of a steam piston. Evidently these distinguished statesmen—Adams, Clay, and Wirt—were not experts in mechanics, or at least did not undertake to hinder by technical criticism the experiments of American ambition; and there was no trained corps of patent-examiners to decide upon the novelty, practicability, and usefulness of any proposed improvement ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond

... six-and-twenty. He was never seen in any other dress, and yet there was a certain stiffness in his manner of wearing this, as if there were a want of adaptation between him and it, recalling some mechanics in their holiday clothes. He had acquired mechanically a great store of teacher's knowledge. He could do mental arithmetic mechanically, sing at sight mechanically, blow various wind instruments mechanically, even play the great church organ mechanically. From his early childhood ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... of meetings were also held in regard to the government of the Sangleys or Chinese, both those naturalized in the country and those who are transient—the traders and mechanics, who are very numerous. All that needed reform was discussed very deliberately, and is being carried out in accordance with the decisions of the other tribunals. However, we cannot help having a million difficulties in regard to all the matters concerning that nation, as we do ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various

... (1821-97): author of "Animal Mechanics, a Manual of Geology," and numerous papers on Physics, Mathematics, Geology, etc. In November 1862 Darwin wrote to Sir J.D. Hooker: "Do you know whether there are two Rev. Prof. Haughtons at Dublin? One of this name has made a splendid medical discovery of nicotine counteracting ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... In August, 1565, just as the half-starved colonists were preparing to leave the country, an expedition with fresh settlers—mostly discharged soldiers, a few young nobles, and some mechanics with their families, three hundred in all—arrived in the harbor. It brought an abundance of supplies and other things needed by a colony in a new country. It looked then as though these Frenchmen would succeed in their plan and establish a permanent ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton

... Vauxhall, brought a complaint of a singular nature before the author, as Sheriff of Selkirkshire. The singular dexterity with which the show-man had exhibited the machinery of his little stage, had, upon a Selkirk fair-day, excited the eager curiosity of some mechanics of Galashiels. These men, from no worse motive that could be discovered than a thirst after knowledge beyond their sphere, committed a burglary upon the barn in which the puppets had been consigned to repose, and carried them off in the nook of their plaids, when returning ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... Mechanics, school teachers, and laborers of every description, are much wanted in this State, as they are in all the States further west; and all may provide abundantly and easily, all the necessaries of living for a family, if they will ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... exceedingly rural and retired collection of mean houses, possessing neither physician, apothecary, nor attorney, to give it importance. A small inn, two or three shops of the humblest kind, and some twenty cottages of labourers and mechanics, composed the place, which, at that early day, had not even a chapel, or a conventicle; dissent not having made much progress then in England. The parish church, one of the old edifices of the time of the Henrys, stood ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... engagement for the "Cosmorama," on which Landells and Last committed infanticide at the starting of Punch. He sent his first paper from his temporary rooms at Chertsey; it was the burlesque, "Transactions and Yearly Report of the Hookham-cum-Snivey Literary, Scientific, and Mechanics' Institute" (12th September, 1841). This was succeeded in the following month, with the opening of his "Physiology of a London Medical Student," which was rather laughable in itself, while displaying a wonderful intimacy with the rough and noisy world with which ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... Assyrians knew as little of perspective as they did of mechanics. When they had to figure a building and its contents, or a landscape background, they could not resist the temptation of combining many things which could not be seen from a single standpoint. Like the painters and sculptors of Thebes they mixed up in ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... his reappointment; whilst in Gateshead he so transformed the Circuit that before many weeks had passed the Central Chapel, which had hitherto borne the dignified but cool-sounding name of "Bethesda," was dubbed by the mechanics, who formed the bulk of the surrounding population, "The ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... rapidly leavening the lump of hard Western life and preparing it for the great days and the awful struggle that were so soon to come. Books found their way into the Athens of the West, as Lexington was called, and gradually, under the fostering care of Henry Clay, the Mechanics' Library came to play an important part. St. Louis, too, boasted of its Mercantile Library; and there were numerous other collections of religious writings, history, and the English poets, mostly in private hands like those of John M. Peck, of Illinois. Newspapers, such as the Republican ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... In fact all mechanical employments have, within a few years risen in rank, in this country, not through the influence of efforts to impress the community directly with a sense of their importance, but simply because mechanics themselves have risen in intellectual and moral character. In the same manner the employment of the teacher will be raised most effectually in the estimation of the public, not by the individual who writes the most eloquent oration on the intrinsic dignity of the art, but by the one who goes ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... punch,—others sitting at the windows of different parlors,—some with faces flushed, puffing cigars. The bill of fare for the day was stuck up beside the bar. Opposite this principal hotel there was another, called "The Mechanics," which seemed to be equally thronged. I suspect that the company were about on a par in each; for at the Maverick House, though well dressed, they seemed to be merely Sunday gentlemen,—mostly young fellows,—clerks in dry-goods stores being the aristocracy of them. One, very fashionable ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... abruptly Lee found himself envisaging the monstrous globe out here in Space. A thing to disarrange the mechanics of all the Celestial Universe! In an hour or two, with this acceleration of growth, the globe would be ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings

... spirit of self-reform has been awakened round here, in many a heart which I thought once utterly frivolous. I find, in every circle of every class, men and women asking to be taught their duty, that they may go and do it; I find everywhere schools, libraries, and mechanics' institutes springing up: and rich and poor meeting together more and more in the faith that God has made them all. As for the outward and material improvements—you know as well as I, that since free trade and emigration, the labourers confess themselves ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... and stupidity in it,' and they explain it all as stupidity! That's why they so dislike the living process of life; they don't want a living soul! The living soul demands life, the soul won't obey the rules of mechanics, the soul is an object of suspicion, the soul is retrograde! But what they want though it smells of death and can be made of India-rubber, at least is not alive, has no will, is servile and won't revolt! And it comes in the end to their reducing everything to the building of walls and the ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... around the huge western factory of the Mercury Automobile Company and curved off behind a mass of autumn-gray woodland, was swarming with dingy, roaring, nakedly bare cars. The spluttering explosions from the unmuffled exhausts, the voices of the testers and their mechanics as they called back and forth, the monotonous tones of the man who distributed numbers for identification and heard reports from his force, all blended into the cheery eight-o'clock din of a commencing ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... commerce. They ask that the commutation of the royal fifth to one-tenth be made perpetual; and that offices and encomiendas be bestowed only on actual residents, who have rendered services in the islands. Workmen and mechanics in Manila should be paid there, and not in Mexico; a special official should be placed in charge of the ships; and there should be no commissary of the Inquisition in the islands. Complaint is made that too much money is sent thither ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair

... And if people do come, I'll take care of the soldiers and sailors, if you will attend to the farmers and mechanics." ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... had not appeared at the Court, died at Paris a little after midnight on the night between Easter Sunday and Monday, the last of March and first of April, and in his seventy- sixth year. No man had ever more ability of all kinds, extending even to the arts and mechanics more valour, and, when it pleased him, more discernment, grace, politeness, and nobility. But then no man had ever before so many useless talents, so much genius of no avail, or an imagination so calculated to be a bugbear ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... and the two city electricians toiled early and late. They scarcely stopped to eat, so feverish was their haste. Mr. Crowninshield had let it be known that if the wireless apparatus was in condition to send and receive messages within a week he would add to the regular wages of the mechanics a generous bonus and this incentive was sufficient to cause the avaricious workmen to transgress the laws of the labor unions and forget any fatigue ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... the spiritual wants of the parishes in and near which they lived, as well as for the education of the young, both rich and poor, but they were also the philosophers, the authors, the artists, and the physicians, nay, even the farmers and the mechanics of Mediaeval times. They built cathedrals and churches, made roads and bridges, copied books when writing stood in the place of printing, and were in general the props and pioneers of civilization. Amongst the very large number ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt

... meant. If they did not know, he reckoned it a failure. He was also in the habit of painting from memory. While at Venice, he put on canvas the faces of friends at Florence whom he had not seen for months. That the art of painting was subservient in his estimation to mechanics, is indicated by what we hear about the camera, in which he showed landscapes by day and the revolutions of the stars by night, so lively drawn that the spectators were affected with amazement. The semi-scientific impulse ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... officers brandished their spontoons in front, or who rushed in night attack on the advanced redoubt at Yorktown, were not, like modern European soldiers, brought together by conscription. They were, nominally at least, volunteers. Unruly lads, mechanics out of work, runaway apprentices, were readily drawn into the service by skillful recruiting officers. Thirty years before, it had been the custom of these landsharks to cheat or bully young men into the service. The raw youth, arriving in Paris from the country, had been offered ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... been in Ireland fifteen years, and have gone on fairly smoothly, but with a world of management. For the sake of peace I have not five Protestants in the place; and I would have none if I could help it. It is, however, necessary to have Protestant foremen. Irishmen are not born mechanics. In Scotland and England men take to the vice and the lathe like mother's milk, but here it is labour and pain. Irishmen are not capable of steady, unremitting work. They want a day on and a day off. They wish to be traders, cattle-drovers, pig-jobbers, that they may wander from fair to fair. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... unwilling to take the trouble to assign to each train a proportionate quantity of all the articles to be transported, he had packed one after another with just such things as lay most conveniently at hand. The consequence was, that in the wagons which were burned were contained all the mechanics' implements, stationery, and horse-medicines, although the loss of the latter was not to be regretted. The rest of their contents was mostly flour and bacon. Had the Mormons burned the next three trains upon the road, they would have destroyed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... at one extreme, have paid too exclusive attention to the mechanics of the voice. The "empiricists" have gone to the other extreme in leaving out of account fundamental facts in acoustics, ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown

... huffs, And the Sons of Harmony came to cuffs, While feuds arose and family quarrels, That discomposed the mechanics of morals, For screws were loose between brother and brother, While sisters fasten'd their nails on each other; Such wrangles, and jangles, and miff, and tiff, And spar, and jar—and breezes as stiff As ever upset a friendship—or skiff! The plighted lovers, who used to walk, Refused to ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... shop was never built; the genius failed to invent. But his son, David! Yes, he would have the schooling and advantages that the father had not known. And so it was: at thirty, David Scott had been well educated in mechanics; at forty, he had made improvements on the sewing-machine, which gave him valuable patents; at fifty, his factory employed ten times the number his father had visioned. Thus was fulfilled ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... had access to many books, but he knew books better than most men of his age. He knew the Bible by heart; he was familiar with Shakespeare; he could repeat nearly all the poems of Burns; he knew much about physics and mechanics; he had mastered the ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin



Words linked to "Mechanics" :   kinetics, performance, Newtonian mechanics, aeromechanics, reaction, mechanical, kinematics, airplane mechanics, classical mechanics, carrying out, execution, statics, quantum mechanics, physics, jerk, mechanism, statistical mechanics, natural philosophy, pneumatics, wave mechanics, aerodynamics, carrying into action, auto mechanics, hydraulics, celestial mechanics



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com