"Propulsion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... — N. impulse, impulsion, impetus; momentum; push, pulsion^, thrust, shove, jog, jolt, brunt, booming, boost [U.S.], throw; explosion &c (violence) 173; propulsion &c 284. percussion, concussion, collision, occursion^, clash, encounter, cannon, carambole^, appulse^, shock, crash, bump; impact; elan; charge &c (attack) 716; beating &c (punishment) 972. blow, dint, stroke, knock, tap, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he caught up a long pole, and pressing one end against the bed of the river exerted himself with might and main to impel the boat forward. He called to the two men to do the same, and under their united propulsion the boat advanced, but at ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... to move, or control the movement of, materials within cavities and tubes, and they do this by means of the pressure which they exert. Examples of their action have already been studied in the propulsion of the food through the alimentary canal and in the regulation of the flow of blood through the arteries (pages 159 and 49). While they do not contract so quickly, nor with such great force as the striated muscles, their ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... that, in 1784, William Symington, the inventor of the steamboat, conceived the idea of employing steam power in the propulsion of carriages; and, in 1786, he had a working model of a steam carriage constructed which he submitted to the professors and other scientific gentlemen of Edinburgh. But the state of the Scotch roads was ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... development of the steamboat almost all earlier means of propulsion, natural and artificial, were used as models by the inventors. The fins of fishes, the webbed feet of amphibious birds, the paddles of the Indian, and the poles and oars of the riverman, were all imitated by the patient inventors struggling with the problem. Rumsey's first ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... outlet to their passions through the imagination, while insensibly helping them toward balance of character and serenity of judgment by stimulating their sense of proportion, form, and the nice adjustment of means to ends. In none of our poets has the constant propulsion of an unbending will, and the concentration of exclusive, if I must not say somewhat narrow, sympathies done so much to make the original endowment of nature effective, and in none accordingly does the ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... two steamers—the first a screw, commanded by Captain Yelverton, and the second by Captain Hall—had been detached from the fleet, and employed for a considerable time in reconnoitring the forts of the enemy about Hango Bay. Propulsion by means of a screw was at this time a novelty, the steamships of war being generally large paddle boats and sailing ships combined, a state of transition between the frigate of Nelson's day and the ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... fire, or battle, depends upon the Engineers. Their machinery trains and elevates, loads and controls the heavy guns. The use of the Whitehead torpedo and all its appliances would be an impossibility without the Engineers. In addition to this there is the propulsion of the ship, and the control and supervision of a large staff of artificers and men. And yet the Engineer officers are the lowest paid class of commissioned officers in the Royal Navy—this when, without exaggeration, they may be ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... are shallow, poles are used, which the men handled very dexterously, nicking in and out amongst the rocks and rapids in the neatest way; but in the main the propulsion was by our paddles, a delight to me, having been bred to canoeing from boyhood. We stopped for luncheon at a lovely "place of trees" overhanging a deep, dark, alluring pool, where we knew there were fish, but had no time to make a cast. So ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... goat-skin, with the hair inside. The thing was extremely small, even for me, and I can hardly imagine that it could have floated with a full-sized man. There was one thwart set as low as possible, a kind of stretcher in the bows, and a double paddle for propulsion. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trim and swift-looking. Beneath the bases of the tentacles, on the under side of the body, a sort of valve opened spasmodically and took in a huge gulp of water, which was at once ejected with great force through a tube among the tentacles. Driven by the strange propulsion of this pulsating stream, the elongated shape shot swiftly on its way, but travelling backward instead of forward. The traveller had apparently taken his direction with care before he started, however, for he made his way straight to another rock, weedier and more ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... defence of metaphysical vitalism, and especially in the instance of the evolution of eyes by two different methods, which is his palmary argument. Since in some molluscs and in vertebrates organs that coincide in being organs of vision are reached by distinct paths, it cannot have been the propulsion of mechanism in each case, he says, that guided the developments, which, being divergent, would never have led to coincident results, but the double development must have been guided by a common tendency towards vision. Suppose (what some ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... to take this money, although knowing well enough it was not mine to take, was too great for me. It was the resultant of every force of, I might say, my special business propulsion. This temptation lay along the lines on which I had built up my life: the pursuance of a line of action by which I might get rich quick.—Then came the crash. That special guaranteed stock broke—never ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... York, whittled out a spiral or augur-like screw-propeller, in miniature, which he thought admirably adapted to the canal. He soon after went to Buffalo, and contracted for a boat to be built, with two of his Archimedean screws for propulsion by steam. ...
— History of Steam on the Erie Canal • Anonymous
... the lower ends of the backbones of the two smaller fish and covered them with hide. They were about five feet long and quite heavy; but we intended to use them more for the purpose of steering than for propulsion. The current of the stream would attend to that ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... farmers were not disposed to inquire into the mysteries of high finance and the nature of public credit. All doubts were laid to rest by the magic phrase "natural resources."[57] Mass-meetings here and there gave propulsion to the movement.[58] Candidates for State office were forced to make the maddest pledges. A grand demonstration was projected at Vandalia ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... was placed in the boat. Angela took a seat in the bows whilst Jim threw his weight on the pole, the sole means of propulsion. There was a loud crack, and the punter was almost thrown over the side as the rotten pole broke in the middle. The strong current sent the craft whirling down-stream. Jim grabbed a coil of rope, made it fast to a ring-bolt, and went over ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... propelled through space, shape is of no importance. If it has rough and jagged sides its speed or its distance may be limited, as compared with a perfectly rounded form. It may be made in such a shape as will offer less resistance to the air in flight, but its actual propulsion through space does not depend on how it is made, but on the power which propelled it, and such a missile ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... (Gray). There are various types which have been called the paralytic, the choreic, and the saltatory. A tendency to go backward or retropulsion has been observed, according to Gray, as has also a tendency to go forward or propulsion. A curious phenomenon in this disease is that the patient can use the legs perfectly well lying in bed. The prognosis ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... chord of the arc of the other's flight, Michael closed his jaws on the back and side of the neck. Such abrupt arrest in mid-flight by the heavier dog brought the fox-terrier down on deck with, a heavy thump. Simultaneous with this, Captain Duncan's second kick landed, communicating such propulsion to Michael as to tear his clenched teeth through the flesh and out of the flesh ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... little idiosyncrasy of design that escaped us both until she was about ready to launch—there was no method of propulsion. Her sides were far too high to permit the use of sweeps, and when Perry suggested that we pole her, I remonstrated on the grounds that it would be a most undignified and awkward manner of sweeping down upon the foe, even if we could ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... material; a few were girdled with belts of skin, having well-wrought metal buckles. Their paddles were not of wood. Not one trace of wood, in fact, was anywhere to be seen. Light metal blades, well-shaped and riveted to iron handles, served for propulsion. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the accounts of the Caesarian section, and of the towering geniuses who had come safe into the world by it, cast upon this hypothesis? Here you see, he would say, there was no injury done to the sensorium;—no pressure of the head against the pelvis;—no propulsion of the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, either by the os pubis on this side, or os coxygis on that;—and pray, what were the happy consequences? Why, Sir, your Julius Caesar, who gave the operation a name;—and your Hermes Trismegistus, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... the helix, and the paddle-wheel constitute at present the means of propulsion that are exclusively employed when one has recourse to a motive power for effecting the propulsion of a boat. The sail constitutes an entirely different mode, and should not figure in our enumeration, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... touch, between nature and man. "I am much better," he writes, "and my new and tender health is all over me like a voluptuous feeling." And whatever fame, or charm, or life-inspiring gift he has had as a speculative thinker, is the vibration of the interest he excited then, the propulsion into years which clouded his early promise of that first buoyant, irresistible, self-assertion. So great is even the indirect power of a sincere effort towards the ideal life, of even a temporary escape of the ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... couple of years or so that they took the matter up, after a successful voyage made by the Archimedes, the first sea-going screw steamer. They then built a small craft called the Bee, fitted with both paddles and screw, to try which was the better means of propulsion. The screw had the best of it, and after the further experiment of building two vessels of the same size and power, the one with paddles the other with a screw, and finding the screw still superior, it was finally adopted as ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... aslant like a gable roof, and heavily backed up with timber and cotton bales. Her whole bow formed a powerful ram; the shield, flat on the top, was pierced for ten guns of heavy calibre, three in each broadside, two forward, and two aft. Had her means of propulsion proved equal to her power of attack and defence, it is doubtful if the whole Union navy on the Mississippi could have stood against her single-handed. The situation thus strangely recalls that presented by the Merrimac, or ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... to the horrors of starvation. I positively dreaded to think of what might be the effect of this upon the women; therefore, that we might not lie there absolutely helpless, I started to scull the boat with the steering oar. But she was heavy for this style of propulsion, and I estimated that our progress did not amount to more than three-quarters ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... thinks Philip Hardin, as he sees these dazzling rockets rise, with golden trails, into the social darkness of the Western skies, "they are really the upper classes here. Their power of propulsion to the zenith is inherent in themselves. If they mingle, in time, with the aristocratic noblesse of Europe, they may infuse a certain picturesque element." Hardin realizes that some of the children ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... been flaunted before a jeering audience the patrolman pushed his prisoner ten feet along the sidewalk, imparting to the offender's movements an involuntary gliding gait, with backward jerks between forward shoves; this method of propulsion being known in the vernacular of the force as "givin' a skate ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... of motive power. As long as water, which is a non-exhaustive source of motion, was used, the people were scattered over the land; or if segregation took place, it was in the neighborhood of running streams. The application of steam to the propulsion of machinery, and the discovery of engines capable of competing with the human hand, led to the substitution of machine-made fabrics for clothing, in place of homespun articles of domestic manufacture. ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... in its position, the Leviathan's tail acts in a different manner from the tails of all other sea creatures. It never wriggles. In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority. To the whale, his tail is the sole means of propulsion. Scroll-wise coiled forwards beneath the body, and then rapidly sprung backwards, it is this which gives that singular darting, leaping motion to the monster when furiously swimming. His side-fins only serve to ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... supplied by European manufactures, for a long time to come make the home-supply the chief care of our artisans. They have, for such and other reasons, in some points lost ground of late. The revolution in the propulsion and construction of ships, for instance, has not found them prepared to take the advantage they have usually done of improvements. Not only do the British screw-steamers take undisputed possession of our trade with their own country, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... principles made its appearance. This, be it observed, was only two years after Watt had patented his first steam engine, and it was nearly fifty years before Stephenson built his first locomotive. The railroad originally was as completely dissociated from steam propulsion as was the ship. Just as vessels had existed for ages before the introduction of mechanical power, so the railroad bad been a familiar sight in the mining districts of England for at least two centuries before the invention of Watt really gave it wings and turned ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... so, but the Doctor says the spitting is accidental, a by-product I suppose. The method consists in taking the right hand in both yours, turning it palm upwards, bending your head low over it, and saying with great energy and a violent propulsion of ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... in the gravity propulsion plates too," Carse said shortly. "Their adjustment's been ruined by it, and we're out of control, turning over and over. I couldn't possibly see Judd. Well, we've got to go down to the plates and try ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... canoe propulsion was forced on them. They came to a long stretch of smooth, deep, very swift water, almost a rapid-one of the kind that is a joy when you are coming down stream. It differed from the last in having shores that ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... purposes, more than a month's distance from the centre of government. Steam was gradually making its way, and the record passage by sailing ship, from Quebec to Portsmouth, had occupied only eighteen days and a half,[1] but sails were still the ordinary means of propulsion, and the average length of voyage of 237 vessels arriving at Quebec in 1840 was well over forty days.[2] To the immigrant, however, the voyage across the Atlantic was the least of his troubles; for the internal communications of Canada left ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... your physics, Mr. Smith," said the doctor. "If she had no gravity, no amount of muscular propulsion could have given her any momentum. And again, if she had no gravity, she must inevitably have ascended beyond the ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... rocket doesn't much care where it lifts or sets down, since its method of propulsion isn't trying to work against the fabric of space itself. For that reason, an interstellar vessel is normally built in space and stays there, using ion rockets for loading and unloading its passengers. It's cheaper ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... or sense, is present in some mammals, but it is by no means so phenomenal as in some species of birds. In mammals it is individual rather than species-wide. Individual horses, dogs and cats have done wonderful things under the propulsion of the homing instinct, but that instinct is by no means general throughout those species. Among wild animals, exhibitions of the home-finding instinct are rare, but the annals of the Zoological Park contain ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... to the standards when war broke out in 1861! Americans acted like Americans. They divided in conviction. They did not differ as to the method of dealing with conviction. To divide was the propulsion of conditions, to fight the law of blood. Not one of the Lees had provoked war, but not one stood back. The whole family of Lees became representative soldiers of their people; Gen. Robert E. Lee commanded the greatest of the Southern armies and his brother became an admiral ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... answered in a few days' time, no doubt, in view of the rapidity with which we are ripping through the water, under the action of a means of propulsion that I shall end by finding out all about. As regards the second, I am by no means so sure that my curiosity will ever ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... large galley, but these represented something different from anything in either Christian or Turkish fleets. They were an attempt to reach a combination of galleon and galley, possessing the bulk, strength, and heavy armament of the former, together with the oar propulsion of the latter to render them independent of the wind. But like most, if not all, compromise types, the galleass was short-lived. It was clumsy and slow, being neither one thing nor the other. Most of the time on the cruise these galleasses had to be towed in ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... nor the other of these things occurred, but that the submarine's delicate electrical machinery was thrown out of order by the violence of a depth-charge explosion, even when a considerable distance away. With the electric engines used for submerged propulsion no longer available, and possibly the interior of the vessel in darkness, there were only two courses open. She could either rise to the surface and endeavour to fight it out with the aid of her powerful deck guns, or else sink to the bottom and trust to ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... was editor of the Chicago Tribune; he was one of the coterie who claimed to have "discovered" Abraham Lincoln, and surely added propulsion to the wave carrying him to Washington. Another version of this anecdote is applied to the breaking up of General Early's rashly advanced army in July; but it would seem, by Mr. Medill's name, that this is the genuine; the ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... masses of timber—not yet firmly lashed together—lay loose and loggish upon the water, and moved very slowly and irregularly under such ill-assorted propulsion: and, notwithstanding that the raft had obtained a hundred yards the start of the swimmers, its occupants began seriously to ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... innards were intact. He must have looked closer and saw that the drive unit had escaped destruction. The drive unit of a tug is a super-heavy duty workhorse of a unit chock full of more power than would ever be packed or needed in a conventional ship of the same size. But as I said before, this was a propulsion unit from a tug, and tugs like ones we use need ...
— Jack of No Trades • Charles Cottrell
... of the air method of propulsion did away with the necessity of a large propellor such as most airships have to use, a propellor which must of necessity be very light ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... the guide, two other passengers and the four horses, trusted ourselves to a somewhat fragile raft. Accustomed as I was to the swift and sure steamers on the Elbe, I found the oars of the rowers rather a slow means of propulsion. It took us more than an hour to cross the fiord; but the passage was effected without ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... admired? Nay, what mattered their envy, so long as they envied? The tonic north wind, the sunshine, the sparkle of the water, the gay lines of bunting flickering from stem to stern of the Committee Ship, the invigorating blare of the Troy Town Band, now throwing its soul into "Champagne Charlie," the propulsion of the oars that seemed to snatch her and sweep her forward past wondering faces to high destiny— all these were wings, and lifted her spirit with them. She began to under stand what it must feel like to be a Queen, or (at ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... it difficult to convince himself that this interest in guns and marksmanship had any sinister propulsion back of it. His father and brothers had always been this way. Rifles were as important to pioneers as plows, and their skillful use was an achievement every frontiersman tried to attain. Friendly rivalry ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... was a long slender ship of extremely low freeboard, rakish rigged as a single-master, both sails and oars being used as a means of propulsion; two small cannon were mounted forward, and a round dozen arquebuses were also carried. The total company and passengers of the three ships were ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... juice-drained latter times have spawned. I should have advertised you that the meaning is frequently hard to be got at,—and so are the future guineas that now lie ripening and aurifying in the womb of some undiscovered Potosi; but dig, dig, dig, dig, Manning! I set to with an unconquerable propulsion to write, with a lamentable want of what to write. My private goings on are orderly as the movements of the spheres, and stale as their music to angels' ears. Public affairs, except as they touch upon me, and so turn into private, I cannot whip up my mind ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... Captain Miriam had Delta and Epsilon. He was to operate separately in the British Channel, while my station was the Straits of Dover. I made the whole plan of campaign clear to him. Then I saw that each ship was provided with all it could carry. Each had forty tons of heavy oil for surface propulsion and charging the dynamo which supplied the electric engines under water. Each had also eighteen torpedoes as explained and five hundred rounds for the collapsible quick-firing twelve- pounder which we carried on deck, and which, of course, disappeared into a water-tight tank when we were submerged. ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but held her gaze upon the little vessel, whose curving to the right might change at any moment; but it kept straight on under the propulsion of the breeze until hidden from sight by the tops of the trees. The three men had certainly approached land, though it could not be said they ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... I'm going to call it the Damon Whizzer. Maybe Demon Whizzer would be more appropriate, but we won't decide on that now. Anyhow, it's going to be a whizzer, and I want to talk to you about it. There is an entirely new principle of elevation and propulsion involved in my Whizzer, ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... flat-bottomed punt used by fishermen, and at present moored to a stake at the river-bank. It was capacious, certainly, but not exactly the sort of boat in which to get up much pace, particularly as its sole apparent mode of propulsion was by means of two very long boat-hooks, one on either side. These details, however, presented few obstacles to the minds of the enterprising explorers. The punt was in many ways adapted for a voyage such as they proposed to take. There was room to walk about in ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... complete bars between the gill slits. There is no -distinct- heart, but the whole of the cardiac aorta is contractile, and at the bases of the aortic arches that run up the bars there are contractile dilatations that assist in the propulsion of the blood. Dorsal to the pharynx, as in fishes, there is a pair of dorsal aorta (d.ao.) that unite above the liver (compare the frog, for instance), and thence run backward as a median dorsal aorta (d.ao.'). A portal ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... abandoned, left there, all alone on the verge, and before any of them knew where they were she was over it. Happily, she was unaware of the violence with which she went. She seemed to herself to move, downward indeed, but with a sure and slow propulsion. She believed herself challenged to the demonstration by the Colonel's attitude. The high distinction of it, that was remotely akin to Mr. Lucy's, somehow obscured and degraded her. She conceived a dislike to this well-behaved and honourable gentleman, and to ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... to his feet, there came a panting cry from Bob, another scream from Miss Faulkner. Then through the air went flying the form of Bob's assailant. He had fallen victim to Bob's famous wrestling grip, which lifted the man from his feet and sent him flying over Bob's head. But into the propulsion this time Bob put all his great strength. The result was that, instead of falling immediately behind Bob, the fellow cannoned through the air a distance ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... activity displayed in the matter of storage batteries for street cars, and that continued and substantial progress is being made in each successive case. The prejudices against the application of secondary batteries are being rapidly dispelled, and there are indications everywhere that this method of propulsion will soon take a recognized place among the great transit facilities in the United States. I feel convinced that this country will also in this respect be far ahead of Europe before another year has passed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... soon as he found opportunity. He did not quite know why. He did not stop to ask himself why. It was a purely instinctive propulsion. He followed his impulse as the needle swings to the pole; as an object released from the hand at a great height obeys the force of ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... removed, when the canoe was headed directly toward them, and under the propulsion of the many skillful arms, it came like a bird over the surface of the waters. A few rods away its speed was slackened, and, before approaching closer, it made a circuit around the voyageurs' canoe, as if the warriors were ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... of vessel, for we distinguished what was clearly a mast with a sail, though, as there was very little wind that morning, the sail hung idly by the mast. A little later we were able to be sure that what we saw was a kind of raft, with, as I have said, a mast and sail, but that its propulsion came from some human beings who were aboard it, and who were causing its slow progress with oars. By this time I had got out a spy-glass from our tent; and then Lancelot gave a cry of amazement, for he recognised in the new-comers certain of those colonists our companions whom ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... primitive races, applying their wisdom and learning to the investigation of the origin of domestic and other implements and contrivances, inform us that the first boat was probably a log, on which the man sat astride, using a stick as a means of propulsion. In time the idea of hollowing the log occurred, Nature undoubtedly presenting the model and inviting the novice to squat inside. But what was the inhabitant of a certain island in the Gulf of Carpentaria to do since Nature failed to provide a tree big enough to possess ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... leaflets of the nibong palms, many of which were found near the spot where they had encamped. The pith of the same palm served him for the swell of the arrow, which, being compressible like cork, fills up the tube of the sumpitan, and renders the shaft subject to propulsion from the quick puff of breath which the blow-gun marksman, from long practice, ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... BICYCLE PROPULSION.—So much has been invented for and said about bicycles, that it seems strange that anything is left to say or to do, yet here is a very novel idea. It is not so very long since wind and water were the only motor powers, but ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 42, August 26, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... and divide it more perfectly. No blades or projections are affixed to the interior of the cylinder. Above, where the peat enters into a flaring hopper, is a scraper, that prevents adhesion to the sides and gives downward propulsion to the peat. The blades are, by this construction, very strong, and not liable to injury from small stones or roots, and effectually reduce the ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... 3,000 revolutions per minute, or 50 revolutions per second, which is by far the most rapid rate of motion ever imparted to a water wheel. This is, also, beyond comparison the greatest fall applied to the propulsion of a wheel in America. The wheel at Meriden is of the most diminutive size, scarcely exceeding in dimensions the old-fashioned "turnip" watches which our grandfathers used to carry in their capacious vest pockets. The complete success of ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... imminent danger; we had out all the firearms we could muster; these amounted to two rifles, two shot guns, and five revolvers. I watched with great keenness the motion of their arms that gives the propulsion to their spears, and the instant I observed that, I ordered a discharge of the two rifles and one gun, as it was no use waiting to be speared first. I delayed almost a second too long, for at the instant I gave the word several spears had left the enemy's hands, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... for talking so much," concluded Rachel, and, with a courtesy first to the one then to the other, walked away. Her gait was no square march like her uncle's, but a sort of sidelong propulsion, rendered more laborious by the thick grass of ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... on which he was to ride was about sixty-five feet in diameter and approximately three times that in length. The propulsion was, the builders and engineers acknowledged, not the ultimate by any means. They were still constantly experimenting and hoping for much swifter travel. Still, they did ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... of venereal indulgence. The remote cause is probably the stimulus of the semen; whence the phallus becomes distended with blood by the arterial propulsion of it being more strongly excited than the correspondent venous absorption. At the same time a new sense is produced in the other termination of the urethra; which, like itching, requires some ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... have witnessed; our misgivings are as to the cost. The railway is the invention of the well known hydraulic engineer, Monsieur Girard, who, as early as 1852, endeavored to replace the ordinary steam traction on railways by hydraulic propulsion, and in 1854 sought to diminish the resistance to the movement of the wagons by removing the wheels, and causing them to slide on broad rails. In order to test the invention, Mons. Girard demanded, and at the end of 1869 obtained, a concession for a short line ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... great nation from barbarism to an elementary form of culture is always interesting. So, too, is the same transition in the case of a "great profession." In 1840, when the propulsion of ships by means of a steam-driven screw opened a new era in maritime history, the "practical man" in the engineering trade was an uneducated savage. Possessing no trade union, no voice in Parliament, no means of ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... young friend had been inducted, was all that could have been desired for the scion of a noble house, whose pampered whims and vices were to be ministered to by the lavish hand of a fond parent, and where the display of mental abilities was no more necessary than in the propulsion of the mechanism of one of Her Majesty's establishments erected for the ambulating exercises of petty delinquents, yet to a young and high-spirited nature, such as John Ferguson's, the very absence of any intellectual ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... pleased and alarmed them. Such a float as they needed was at their call. There lay a half dozen logs and trees fastened together by several withes, and with enough buoyancy to bear them to the other side. Even the pole to be used in propulsion lay upon the heavy timbers that were pulled just far enough against the bank to prevent them ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... for the propulsion of screw vessels are divided into two great classes,—geared engines and direct acting engines; and each of these classes again has many varieties. In screw vessels, the shaft on which the screw is set requires to ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... alike do their share in the propulsion of the body, the legs perform by far the most important work, and the importance of a good "kick" cannot be too strongly urged. Though the action of the soles of the feet upon the water helps the "drive," the momentum is also given by the "wedge" of water embraced ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... propelling model boats is the electric method. By building a boat large enough to accommodate two dry batteries or a small storage battery and a little power motor, a very reliable method of propulsion is made possible. The boat must have sufficient displacement to accommodate the weight of the dry-cells and storage battery. A boat two feet long, with a beam of 4-1/2 inches, is large enough to accommodate one dry-cell and a small motor, ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... types may be said to embrace all the engines now being manufactured in this country for the propulsion of steam vessels by the screw propeller. In their leading principles they also embrace nearly all paddle engines now being built, whether the cylinders be oscillating, fixed vertically, or inclined ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... on the decomposing power at various distances were made from which the law of propulsion has been deduced, verifying the results of Ohm and those which I made in the summer of 1842, and alluded to in my letter to the Honorable C.G. Ferris, published in the House Report, No. 17, of the ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... of any planet named 'Tellus'; nor of any such ship as yours. Of such incredible mass and with no visible or detectable means of support or of propulsion. Not from this part of the galaxy, certainly ... could it be that intergalactic travel is actually possible? But excuse me, Captain Garlock, none of that is any of my business; which is to determine whether or not you four Tellurian human beings are compatible with, and thus acceptable ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... world is indebted to Robert Fulton for the practical application of steam to the purposes of navigation. Whatever has been claimed for or by others in regard to the priority of the invention or application of the mighty power of steam to the propulsion of vessels, Fulton was "the first to apply it with any degree of practical success," as an English work states it. As one who labored for years over the idea which came from his own brain, though it also came to others, who wellnigh ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... knows what trouble trembled in that throat, What sweet distraction for the summer moon, That lured you out, a frail, careering boat, Across the midnight's purple, deep lagoon! Some fire of madness lit that tiny brain, Some soft propulsion clouded through your breast, And lifted you, a white and moving stain Against the ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... claim to fame arises from his endeavours to introduce steam-power as an agent in the propulsion of ships at sea. Mr. Clerk of Eldin had already invented the system of "breaking the line" in naval engagements—a system that was first practised with complete success by Lord Rodney in his engagement ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... and read the last sentences rapidly, as if the propulsion of the first part of the letter sent him through them. Then he stopped abruptly, and Alicia ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Mind. Yet, acting up to his highest under- 67:12 standing, firm at the post of duty, the mariner works on and awaits the issue. Thus should we deport ourselves on the seething ocean of sorrow. Hoping and work- 67:15 ing, one should stick to the wreck, until an irresistible propulsion precipitates his doom or sunshine gladdens the ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... here are free, and they are worse off than ours; why don't you mend their condition first?' And so the attack and reply went on (this was Sunday evening) for half an hour, amidst laughter, jeers, and the occasional propulsion, by fellows behind, of some unlucky lad or other against the poor preacher's horse; a movement which endangered the woman and child especially, but which appeared to give great satisfaction to many, and which no one interfered in any manner to prevent. I left ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... (L'Annee Psychologique 1895, p. 204) that the propulsion of air from the elastic chamber and the rebound of the pen might interfere with the significance of the graphic record is more serious in connection with the application of this method to piano playing than here; since its imperfection, as that writer says, ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... The final propulsion was to come from an entirely different quarter. In November, 1847, the Reverend Mr. Gorham was presented by the Lord Chancellor to the living of Bramford Speke in the diocese of Exeter. The Bishop, Dr. Phillpotts, was ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... F.R.S., fourth son of the third Earl of Rosse, is the engineer who developed the steam turbine system and made it suitable for the generation of electricity, and for the propulsion of war and mercantile vessels. If he has revolutionized traffic on the water, so on the land has John Boyd Dunlop (still living), who discovered the pneumatic tire with such wide-spread results for motorcars, bicycles, and such ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... day; and his grandson now determined to appeal to the feeling of Nationality in its narrowest and strongest form. That instinct, which Mazzini looked on as the means of raising in turn all the peoples of the world to the loftier plane of Humanity, was now to be the chief motive in the propulsion of the Juggernaut car of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... galleys corresponding to our battleships, light galleys corresponding to our cruisers, while the flotilla was represented by the small "frigates," "brigantines," and similar craft, which had no slave gang for propulsion, but were rowed by the fighting crew. Such armed sailing ships as then existed were regarded as auxiliaries, and formed a category apart, as fireships and bomb-vessels did in the sailing period, and as ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... But the steamer has inexorable limitations. Break her machinery, and, if there be no friendly dock open to receive her, she is reduced at once to a sailing ship, and generally a poor one, too. Nor need you suppose accidents to cause this loss of efficiency. The mode of propulsion implies brevity of power. The galley depended upon the stalwart arms of its crew, and they were as likely to be strong to-morrow as to-day, and next month as to-morrow. The ship puts her trust in her white sails and in the free winds of heaven, which, however fickle they may be, never absolutely ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a deposit of valuable platinum in Siberia, Tom started for that lonely place, and, to reach a certain part of if, he had to invent a new machine, called an air glider. It was an aeroplane without means of propulsion save the wind. ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... engineer, born in Pennsylvania; began life as a miniature portrait and landscape painter, in which he made some progress, but soon turned to engineering; he was one of the first to apply steam to the propulsion of vessels, and devoted much attention to the invention of submarine boats and torpedoes; he built a steamboat to navigate the Hudson River, with a very slow rate of progress however, making only five miles an ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... tame wild horses and drive anything that wore hair could by no means fail to guide a bit of machinery that wouldn't r'ar and run even if a newspaper blew across its face. He mounted the seat, on his first essay alone, with the jauntiness becoming a master of vehicular propulsion. There may have been in his secret heart a bit of trepidation, now that the instructor was not there. In fact, one of the assembled villagers who closely observed his demeanour related afterward that Star's face was froze and that he had hooked onto ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... electronics chief for all three projects. Dick Earle was electronics chief for Pegasus, under Gould, and there were also electronics chiefs for Orion and Cetus. Similarly, the projects had air-frame departments, propulsion departments, instrumentation ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... respect to all such statements relating to the efficiency of the bow and arrow, that the force with which an arrow can be thrown depends not upon any independent action of the bow, but altogether upon the strength of the man who draws it. The bow, in straightening itself for the propulsion of the arrow, expends only the force which the man has imparted to it by bending it; so that the real power by which the arrow is propelled is, after all, the muscular strength of the archer. It is true, a great deal depends on the qualities ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... in all things; all obey His first propulsion from the night: Wake thou and watch!—the world ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... along at the rate of a few inches, or at the utmost 2 or 3 feet per day, abrade, groove, and polish the rock, and the larger blocks are reciprocally grooved and polished by the rock on their lower sides. As the forces both of pressure and propulsion are enormous, the sand acting like emery polishes the surface; the pebbles, like coarse gravers, scratch and furrow it; and the large stones scoop out grooves in it. Lastly, projecting eminences of rock, called ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... cwts.; a second-class, 5 tons 10 cwts., each with passengers; a Pullman car weighs about 30 tons. Our steamers consume 5 lbs. of coal per horse-power in one hour. And last, not least, one of the greatest improvements we have had in steam propulsion is the screw. Again, I may also name the great advantage derived from steam by our farmers in thrashing out grain. The engines principally used in farm-work are what are termed high-pressure, or of the same class as the locomotive. The great saving in cost in the first place, ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... playing with them at first, and doing no more than to ascertain their speed and power of propulsion, and had all along intended to reserve themselves for this triumph at the last. As soon as we reached the winning point, I rose up to give the cheer of victory, but just at that moment, they suddenly backed water with their paddles, and in turning towards the ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... yard at the South Shaft and materially increased the available working area. The telphers were built by the Dodge Cold Storage Company, and were operated by a 75-h.p. General Electric motor for hoisting and a 15-h.p. Northern Electric Company motor for propulsion. Their rated lifting capacity was 10,000 lb. at a speed of ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace and Francis Mason
... circumstance, having with due nicety ascertained, he clenched his fist, which in weight, size, and firmness, was not much surpassed by the hard, and ponderous paw of a full-grown tiger, and with all the force of that propulsion, which a formidable set of muscles afforded, he felled his rival to the ground, and not knowing that he was fallen, discharged many other blows, which only served to disturb the tranquillity of the air. The recumbent hero, whose head was framed for enterprises of this nature, soon recovered ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... consists of an elongated cylinder having a charge chamber in its rear portion, which contains powder for propulsion. The point is a pointed axical bolt, whose rear is furnished with a percussion cap, to be exploded by the forward motion of a striker on ...
— A Refutation of the Charges Made against the Confederate States of America of Having Authorized the Use of Explosive and Poisoned Musket and Rifle Balls during the Late Civil War of 1861-65 • Horace Edwin Hayden
... of ganglia. These pairs of ganglia, though connected by nerves, are very incompletely dependent on any general controlling power. Hence it results that when the body is cut in two, the hinder part continues to move forward under the propulsion of its numerous legs; and that when the chain of ganglia has been divided without severing the body, the hind limbs may be seen trying to propel the body in one direction while the fore limbs are trying to propel it in another. But in the higher Annulosa, called ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... who, working upon the materials supplied by preceding generations, brought the propulsion of boats by steam nearest to perfection, just before the commencement of navigation, were Mr Miller of Dumfries, Mr Taylor, his friend, and tutor in his family, and Mr Symington. All of these were, in a very important ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... breast stroke is learned, floating on the back for rest and swimming on the back, using feet only for propulsion, leaving the hands free to hold a drowning person, should be learned. This can be readily acquired with a little practice, carrying the hands on the surface of the water, arms half bent, with the elbows close to the sides at the waist line. To carry a man this way the hands are placed ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... the great grandfather of a man of the same name, now residing in Campden; so that if there be any truth in the tradition, the application of steam power to the propulsion of hulls must be long prior to the time ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 63, January 11, 1851 • Various
... lubricating oil on the surface of the water. As soon as this "tip" was communicated to Germany, submarines discontinued the use of oil for lubrication, employing instead deflocculated graphite. The fuel oil used in the Diesel engines for propulsion on the surface is so thoroughly consumed and the exhaust now is so free of oil that an oil film as an indication of submarine proximity is no longer trustworthy. Besides, the submerged boat might be a friendly one, a fact which was borne upon the British authorities on two separate ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... Furnivale Woolsen, being an ambitious person, was not to be so easily put down. Besides the consent and petitions, which Cowperwood could not easily get away from him, he had a new form of traction then being tried out in several minor cities—a form of electric propulsion by means of an overhead wire and a traveling pole, which was said to be very economical, and to give a service better than cables and cheaper ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Dec. 6, 1867, at the age of 67. A long and eminently useful although unobtrusive life entitles his memory to respect. He commenced his career as a mechanic in the steam engine establishment of James P. Allaire, soon after the application of steam for the propulsion of boats and long before its application to ships for the purposes of commerce or war. For fifty-two years, with the exception of one or two brief intervals, he was connected with the Allaire works in this city, and for more than forty ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... of which I spoke is a new application of drive principle which has given to us a greatly improved effective velocity for space propulsion. Forty years ago, the minimum elapsed time of return travel to the presumed sector within which the Omega World should lie was about a century. Today we have the techniques to construct a small scouting vessel capable ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... unless every line of the tough, leathery countenance told a falsehood. But he had made his experiment and failed. He knew what manner of man his captor was, and he had no mind for another lesson from him. He slouched to his horse, under propulsion of the revolver, and led the animal ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... down suddenly at right angles with the head, it much resembles an elephant's trunk shorn off at the mouth. Its length averages from eight to fourteen feet; there is no dorsal fin, and the tail is horizontal; colour blue, and white beneath. Its means of propulsion are two paddles, with which it also crawls along the bottom, and beneath which are situated the udders, with teats exactly like a cow's. Its flesh is far from bad, resembling lean beef in appearance, though hardly so good to the taste, and the skin can be manufactured into ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... movement, in part unconscious, from the artificial rhetoric of the former age towards the simplicity of nature, was now to receive its strongest propulsion: it was to be preached like a crusade; to be reduced to a system, and set forth for the acceptance of the poetical world: it was to meet with criticism, and even opprobrium, because it had the arrogance to declare that old things had entirely passed away, and that all things ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... necessities of the case are developing actors who act naturally. One may pose in a canoe on a painted rapid; but how can he do so in the real water course, where every attitude, every play of the muscles must be adapted to the real propulsion of the boat? ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... distinctly visible in the lady's mind, though it was not accurately worded. I saw that I stood marked to be the scape goat of the day, and humbly continued to deserve well, notwithstanding. By dint of simple signs and nods of affirmative, and a constant propulsion of my friend's arm, I drew him into the boat, and thence projected him up to the level with his wife, who had perhaps deigned to understand that it was best to avoid the arresting of his divergent ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... old bus in its way, but too slow; it's a 'pusher', you see, and 'tractors' are all the go. We're having some over to-day—tophole machines." Here ensued much technical discussion between him and N. as to the relative merits of traction and propulsion. ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... window, and gazed out into the darkness. He considered piously the wonders of terrestrial life, a succession of accidents all foreordained by God, an apparent drifting that was in fact one steady propulsion by the hand of fate. From the rich, ancestral house of coraline limestone across the sea to strange lands. From dignity to abasement. From loneliness to this faint, delicious fragrance in which the heart dissolved. From a dream of ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... traders were content to carry their supplies back and forth in canoes. As settlement and business increased, the canoe gave place to the raft, and the raft yielded to the flatboat. In the course of time, steam was applied to the propulsion of boats, and the flatboat yielded to the inevitable: the palatial steamboat was supreme. But the days of the steamboat were numbered when the civil war cast its blight over the land; and when the years of strife were over, so ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... the most startling inventions of all is a machine that counteracts gravity. This, to my mind, is the greatest invention I had yet seen, and, strange to say, these fire creatures know nothing about means of propulsion except by hand power. If you were able to stand on the seething furnace of Alpha Centaurus, you would see these machines rise far into the shooting fire and beyond, as far as occupants can go without freezing to death. Then at a reverse of the lever you would see the mysterious ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... came Robert Fulton, the first man successfully to apply the power of the steam-engine to the propulsion of boats. Everyone has heard the story of how, years before, the youthful James Watt first got his idea of the power of steam by noticing how it rattled the lid on his mother's boiling teakettle. From that came ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... constitute, one with the other, so many obtuse angles, to the end, that by forming powerful levers, and affording every advantage for action to the muscles attached to them, they may be fitted for the purpose of propulsion of the ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... and the dread, natural to a commander dependent upon the winds, to find at some crucial moment part of his fleet thrown hopelessly to leeward. These two points were of the very essence of sailing tactics, and these two points have been eliminated from the modern tactical problem by the changes of propulsion and armament. Lord Nelson was the first to disregard them with conviction and audacity sustained by an unbounded trust in the men he led. This conviction, this audacity and this trust stand out from amongst the lines of the celebrated memorandum, which is but ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... age as in any way self-explanatory or self-contained is inevitably to result in indulgence and spoiling. Any power, whether of child or adult, is indulged when it is taken on its given and present level in consciousness. Its genuine meaning is in the propulsion it affords toward a higher level. It is just something to do with. Appealing to the interest upon the present plane means excitation; it means playing with a power so as continually to stir it up without directing it toward definite achievement. Continuous ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey
... light. Perhaps the most important invention, however, was that of the working steam engine, made by Watt only about a hundred years ago. The most recent application of this form of energy has been in the propulsion of ships, which has already produced so great an effect upon commerce, navigation, and the spread of population over ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... Swedish engineer, residing in this country, who had won a name for himself by inventing the screw-propeller as a means of propulsion for steamships. He and a Connecticut capitalist, C. S. Bushnell by name, had ever since the opening of the war been trying to induce the Government to build some iron-clads after a pattern designed ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... steep, rocky descent which was for some distance without vegetation. Here the two men grappled. There was some hard squeezing, some quick bending either way, a final powerful forcing forward of the arms on the part of Blaise, a last violent propulsion of the same arms, and Barbemouche was thrown backward down the precipice. Blaise stood for a time looking oven. We heard a series of dull concussions, a sound of the flight of detached ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... would be useless, even in certain rivers, in a dry season such as this is proving, and in many small canals at any season. There's only one thing which may bother us in the Frisian Meers, where we can't shove with a quant pole, or if we venture out to sea: we have no means of propulsion except the motor, and as we carry no mast, we cannot set so much as a yard of canvas. If anything should go wrong with the motor, brilliant "Lorelei" will instantly become a mere hulk at the mercy of wind and wave. However, as Starr remarked sagely, we can stop in port ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... drift from God is a movement of events, a propulsion of vital experience, not a parade of words to be ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... way that sailing is managed on the upper reaches of the river; but every now and then we came on barges, laden with hay or other country produce, or carrying bricks, lime, timber, and the like, and these were going on their way without any means of propulsion visible to me—just a man at the tiller, with often a friend or two laughing and talking with him. Dick, seeing on one occasion this day, that I was looking rather hard on one of these, said: "That is one of our force-barges; it is quite as easy to work ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... flight is less than two decades old, and successful dirigible propulsion antedates it by a very short period, the mass of experiment and accomplishment renders any one-volume history of the subject a matter of selection. In addition to the restrictions imposed by space limits, the material ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... swift, staccato sentences into the report-transmitter. Describing the clumsy glittering monster, its motion; its wings; its method of propulsion. It seemed somehow familiar despite its strangeness. ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... brook; and will have noticed, how the little animal wins its way up against the stream, by alternate pulses of active and passive motion, now resisting the current, and now yielding to it in order to gather strength and a momentary fulcrum for a further propulsion. This is no unapt emblem of the mind's self-experience in the act of thinking. There are evidently two powers at work, which relatively to each other are active and passive; and this is not possible without an intermediate faculty, which is at once both active and passive. In philosophical language, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... first work in this country—by which, as in the present instance, he added honor and efficiency to the American navy—was the steam-frigate Princeton, a vessel which in her day was almost as great a novelty as the Monitor is now. The improvements in steam machinery and propulsion and in the arts of naval warfare, which he introduced in her, formed the subject of a lecture delivered before the Boston Lyceum by John O. Sargent, in 1844, from which source we derive some interesting particulars concerning ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... by placing a vertical shaft or stake, provided with a couple of old cart-wheels, in a hole in the ice. One wheel acts as a turning base and prevents the shaft from sinking into the pond, and the other forms a support for the long sweep attached for propulsion purposes, and should be fastened to the shaft about 3 ft. above the base wheel. The sleds are made fast in a string to the long end of the sweep, which when turned rapidly causes the sleds to slide over the ice in a circle ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... overseen by the watchful staff on duty, who listened with strained hearing for a false note in the confused jumble of sound—a clicking of steel out of tune, which would indicate a loosened key or nut. On deck, sailors set the triangular sails on the two masts, to add their propulsion to the momentum of the record-breaker, and the passengers dispersed themselves as suited their several tastes. Some were seated in steamer chairs, well wrapped—for, though it was April, the salt air was chilly—some ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... which tended to repress poetry in the attempt to repress vice. Sorrow and joy have each their peculiar narrowness; and a religious enthusiasm like Savonarola's which ultimately blesses mankind by giving the soul a strong propulsion towards sympathy with pain, indignation against wrong, and the subjugation of sensual desire, must always incur the reproach of a great negation. Romola's life had given her an affinity for sadness which inevitably made her unjust towards merriment. That subtle result ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... compared with the part played by the social atmosphere in which it is drunk. The human is rarely born these days, who, without long training in the social associations of drinking, feels the irresistible chemical propulsion of his system toward alcohol. I do assume that such rare individuals are born, but ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... of Gibraltar he explained to him the great currents sent by the ocean into the Mediterranean, at certain times aiding the screw-propeller in the propulsion of the vessel. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... seer, but is an actual vision of a fact or event which has already happened or as it will transpire in the future. Thus the positive vision consists in the projection of the mind towards the things of the soul-world, while the passive vision in the result of a propulsion of the soul-world upon the passive sense. Of the two kinds of vision, the passive is the more serviceable as being the more perspicuous and literal, but it has the disadvantage of being largely under the control ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... by comparing the movements of the heel with those of the crank-pin of an engine. One serves as the lever by which the gastrocnemius helps to propel the body; the other serves the same purpose in the propulsion of a motor cycle. On referring to Fig. 7, A, the reader will see that the piston-rod and the crank-pin are in a straight line; in such a position the engine is powerless to move the crank-pin until the flywheel is started, ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent |
