"Focal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mirror the great stir upon this subject which then was moving in the world. To these, if they should inquire for the great distinguishing principle of Coleridge's conversation, we might say that it was the power of vast combination 'in linked sweetness long drawn out.' He gathered into focal concentration the largest body of objects, apparently disconnected, that any man ever yet, by any magic, could assemble, or, having assembled, could manage. His great fault was, that, by not opening sufficient spaces for reply or suggestion, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... one of the foremost cities in the South in the manufacture of cotton textiles and products. Commercially its situation resembles that of Indianapolis; it is a focal point of the chief trunk lines of railway in the South, and has the principal railway clearing-house. Like New Orleans, it is an educational centre and one of the foremost in the South. Macon, Dallas, Fort Worth, and San ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... town was soon invaded by fever, which caused it to be deserted; and it has never recovered its former prosperity, though not wholly for this reason, for the completion of the canal destroyed its business basis. Ismailia was the focal point of the great ceremonials at the opening of the canal. The Empress Eugenie of France, the Emperor Frederick of Germany, then crown-prince, and other noted persons, were present; and the celebration is said to have cost the Khedive ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... bewildered dismay; she burst into the merriest fit of laughter, and ran from the room. I soon found that the same undefinable law of change operated between me and all the other villagers; and that, to feel I was in pleasant company, it was absolutely necessary for me to discover and observe the right focal distance between myself and each one with whom I had to do. This done, all went pleasantly enough. Whether, when I happened to neglect this precaution, I presented to them an equally ridiculous appearance, I did not ascertain; but I presume that ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... sold, a Second-hand Achromatic Portrait Lens by Lerebour, 2-1/4 aperture, 7 inches focal length. ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... ultroscope, then, are twin batteries with focal control and frequency control; an ultron shield, battery connected and adjustable, to intercept the direct rays from the "glow-spot," with an ordinary light-shield between it and the lens; and the lens itself, battery connected and with ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... the plane continued its way westward offshore. Frank again took up the glasses and searched the sky, gradually increasing the focal radius. An exclamation from Frank and a hurried request in the transmitter presently reached ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... merely a large collector of moonlight, which was thrown after collection onto a lunium plate. The resultant emanations were turned into a parallel beam by a parabolic reflector and focused, through a rock crystal lens with an extremely long focal ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... was made by the direction, and at the expense of the Board of Longitude, for the purpose of exemplifying the principle of repetition when applied to a circle of so small a diameter as six inches, carrying a telescope of seven inches focal length, and one inch aperture; and of practically ascertaining the degree of accuracy which might be retained, whilst the portability of the instrument should be increased, by a reduction in the size to half the amount which had been previously regarded by the most eminent artists as ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... been done more than half a century ago by Hertz, when he concentrated electric waves upon a focal point by means of a concave mirror," said Hall, "I saw that the key I wanted lay in an extension of these experiments. At last I found that I could transform the energy of an engine into undulations of the ether, which, when they had been concentrated upon a metallic ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... this purpose. It consisted simply in counting the stars of all magnitudes which occur in single fields of view, of fifteen minutes in diameter, visible through a reflecting telescope of 18 inches aperture, and 20 feet focal length, with a magnifying power of 180 degrees, the points of observation being very numerous and taken indiscriminately in every part of the surface of the sphere visible in ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... Italians in Cadore had extended like two arms around one of the principal systems of defense. General Dankl hurried reenforcements to the Cadore front to check the thrust up the Cordevole Valley. At the end of this valley was the focal point of the system of railways that carried food and munitions to both the Trentino forces and those in southern Tyrol. If the Italians had succeeded in cutting the railway at this point the enemy would have ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... air stabbing his lungs, the while he swam unsupported in an ethereal void of brilliance. His mouth was full of something that burned, a liquid hot, acrid, and stinging. He gulped, swallowed, slobbered, choked, coughed, attempted to sit up, was aware that he was the focal center of a ring of glaring, burning eyes, like eyes ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... and the sense of evil. You will awake to the perception of God as All-in-all. You will find yourself losing the knowledge and the operation of sin, proportionably as you realize the divine infinitude and believe that He can see nothing outside of His own focal distance. ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... First Commandment, Thou shalt have one God, one Mind. Mortal man seems to himself to be material sub- 301:24 stance, while man is "image" (idea). Delusion, sin, dis- ease, and death arise from the false testimony of material sense, which, from a supposed standpoint outside the 301:27 focal distance of infinite Spirit, presents an inverted image of Mind and substance ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... able to identify the very spot on which the telescope stood which was used in this memorable research. It was erected at the house then occupied by Molyneux, on the western extremity of Kew Green. The focal length was 24 feet 3 inches, and the eye-glass was 3 and a half feet above the ground floor. The instrument was first set up on November 26th, 1725. If there had be any appreciable disturbance in the place of Beta Draconis in consequence ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... been, and for some decades of years it will continue to be, the necessary chief focal point of our nation. But, in all respects, it is not the true heart. In its composition and dealings, it is almost as much foreign as American. Located on our eastern border, fronting the most commercial ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... nature preserve Natural resources: fish, deepwater ports Land use: arable land: 4% permanent crops: 7% meadows and pastures: 0% forest and woodland: 5% other: 84% Irrigated land: NA km2 Environment: mostly urban and industrialized Note: focal point for Southeast Asian ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... than aid his less fastidious sovereign in overturning the spiritual supremacy of the bishops of Rome. We may honour the conscientious scruples of such men; but, enabled, as we now are, to view their errors at a proper focal distance, we are warranted, by their example, in drawing the inference that the highest human authorities are no tests of truth, and that great energies of intellect often serve but to strengthen prejudices, and give mischievous force ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... by them were more or less confused by rainbow tints, due to the bending, or refracting, by the object glass of the rays of light. To overcome this obstacle to clear vision, and also to secure magnification, the focal lengths of the instruments were greatly extended. Telescopes 38, 50, 78, 130, 160, 210, 400, and even 600 feet long were constructed. I can, however, find nothing on record indicating that the object glasses ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... you all your faults, woe betide you! for desirable as self-knowledge is, it is no kindness to have our faults aggravated a hundred-fold, and concentrated before our minds like the converging rays of the sun, in one focal blaze, nor poured upon our heads like the sweeping torrent, nor eked out like the incessant patterings of a drizzling rain. Thus did not Paul. When he felt it his duty to reprove, he was careful to commend what was ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... to discuss these matters without going into a complete optical discussion. The radii of curvature of the surfaces, beginning with the first, i.e. the external face of the convex lens, are in the ratio of 1, 2, and 3; an allowance of 15 inches focal length per inch of aperture is reasonable (see Optics in Ency. Brit.), and the focal length is the same as the greatest radius of curvature. Thus, for an object glass 2 inches in diameter, the first surface of the convex lens would have a radius of curvature of 10 ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... battle, universal in our sad epoch of "all old things passing away" against "all things becoming new," has its summary and animating heart in that of Radicalism against Church; there, as in its flaming core, and point of focal splendor, does the heroic worth that lies in each side of the quarrel most clearly disclose itself; and Sterling was the man, above many, to recognize such worth on both sides. Natural enough, in such a one, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... then read—with that slightly sing-song cadence which is observed to be common in poets reading their own verses—the following stanzas; holding them at a focal distance of about two feet and a half, with an occasional movement back or forward for better adjustment, the appearance of which has been likened by some impertinent young folks to that of the act of playing on the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... apparatus the sphere is an ordinary round-bottomed flask about 95 mm. in diameter, and the lens a simple double convex lens of about 90 mm. focal length. The sensitive paper employed is the ordinary ferro-prussiate now so much used by engineers for copying tracings. This was selected in consequence of the ease with which the impression is fixed, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... out of thirty-five, in which high fever and leucocytosis appeared episodically, are hardly enough to justify the view that stupors are the result of a specific infection. We must remember, too, that no focal neurological symptoms are ever observed, which makes the possibility of a central nervous ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... A portable observatory. 2. An astronomical clock, made by Mr Shelton. 3. An assistant clock, made by Mr Monk. 4. A transit instrument, made by Mr Bird. 5. An astronomical quadrant, by the same excellent artist. 6. A reflecting telescope, of two feet focal length, by ditto. 7. An achromatic refracting telescope, of three and a half feet, and triple object glass, made by Mr Dollond. 8. A Hadley's sextant, by ditto. 9. Another, by Mr Ramsden. 10. An azimuth compass, by Mr Adams. 11. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... of from one to twenty-five times, with lenses varying in focal length from three to nine ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant
... the focal flames aspire, The mute beholders tremble and retire, Gaze on the miracle, full credence own, And vow obedience to the ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... which is worst of all, unconscious or semi-conscious thoughts and feelings or natural impulses, rising, like a breath of wind under some motion of nature, and again dying away, because not made the subject of artificial review and interpretation, are now brought powerfully under the focal light of the consciousness: and whatsoever is once made the subject of consciousness, can never again have the privilege of gay, careless thoughtlessness—the privilege by which the mind, like the lamps of a mail-coach, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... this kind can be used in several different ways. The 100-inch mirror has a focal length of about 42 feet, and in one of the arrangements of the instrument, the photographic plate is mounted at the centre of the telescope tube near its upper end, where it receives directly the image formed ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... yet Buddhists or Humians can perfectly well describe the facts in the phenomenal terms which are their favorites. For them the soul is only a succession of fields of consciousness: yet there is found in each field a part, or sub-field, which figures as focal and contains the excitement, and from which, as from a centre, the aim seems to be taken. Talking of this part, we involuntarily apply words of perspective to distinguish it from the rest, words like "here," "this," "now," ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... people. No event in the civil history of the country had ever before occurred to so arouse public antipathies and public indignation against any man-and these conditions found special vent in the City of Washington, as the Capitol of the Nation, as it had become during the trial the focal point of the politically dissatisfied element of the entire country. Its streets and all its places of gathering had swarmed for many weeks with representatives of every State of the Union, demanding in a practically united voice the ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... darting about under jib and mainsail, and boarding every vessel that carried the star-spangled "jack" at her fore-topgallant-mast head. Nothing could surpass the tranquil life of the scene: more than a hundred vessels, of all descriptions, were gradually but rapidly approaching a common focal point, the narrow entrance of Boston harbor, under the impulse of a fresh breeze from the south-east, that had not as yet brought forward its accompanying fogs and haze. The Albatross, her thin masts clothed from trucks to deck with snow-white ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... Ceylon, sending a flying column of bagmen and negotiators to India and the Straits Settlements, and distributing a numerical division of business agents throughout China. The Empire of the Celestials was made the focal point of a great propaganda, openly espoused by ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... cut by shell fragments, fell in stiff, draping lines to the ground. Every once in a while a shell would fall into the river, causing a silvery gray geyser to hang for an instant above the green eddies of the Meuse. A certain village along this highway was the focal point of the firing. Many of the houses had been blown to pieces, and fragments of red tile, bits of shiny glass, and lumps of masonry were strewn ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... Meter Angle. The Relation of the Prism-Dioptry to the Lens-Dioptry. The Perfected Prismometer. The Prismometric Scale. On the Practical Execution of Ophthalmic Prescriptions involving Prisms. A Problem in Cemented Bi-Focal Lenses, Solved by the Prism-Dioptry. Why Strong Contra-Generic Lenses of Equal Power Fail to Neutralize Each Other. The Advantages of the Sphero-Toric Lens. The Iris, as Diaphragm and Photostat. The Typoscope. The Correction of Depleted Dynamic ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... of duration was gone. Awareness drifted in formless inattention until a focal point, a mere nucleus of intellect, captured and held it. The nucleus strengthened, became an impression of identity—not his own identity, nor any that he knew, but that of some Other. From this other presence came insistently the warmth and gentleness of good will, ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... touches a life just entering maturity at the focal point toward which all nurture has been tending. Enriched by years of absorption, with ideals defined and channels of expression traced, the soul faces an open door, bearing the inscript "Service." It ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... winding shore; No apt ideas could the pigmy mite, Or embryon emmet to the touch excite; But as each mass the solar ray reflects, The eye's clear glass the transient beams collects; Bends to their focal point the rays that swerve, And paints the living image on the nerve. So in some village-barn, or festive hall The spheric lens illumes the whiten'd wall; 140 O'er the bright field successive figures fleet, And motley shadows dance ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... intercepted by the mirror is generally about 125 degrees. Within this angle is included a large portion of the light emitted by the light-source in the case of direct-current arcs. If this angle is increased for a mirror of a given diameter by decreasing its focal length, the divergence of the beam is increased and the beam-intensity is diminished. This is due to the fact that the light-source now becomes apparently larger; that is, being of a given size it now subtends a larger ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... we may venture to answer in the negative. For in the present case the rule for determining the distance of the distinct base, or respective focus from the glass, is this: as the difference between the distance of the object and focus is to the focus or focal length, so the distance of the object from the glass is to the distance of the respective focus or distinct base from the glass. [Molyneux Dioptr., Par. I. Prop. 5.] Let us now suppose the object to be placed ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... afternoon, back on the beach to watch the moon rise, she was perpetually active, perpetually in earnest, perpetually in a hurry. To the others, her energy was amusing and, at times, a little wearing. They liked better to spend long hours on the beach, where their awning soon became a focal point for the fun of the bathing hour; they loved to roam over the moors, to sit down now and then on their own broad piazzas and glance from book to sea and from sea to book again with the curious indifference to time and literature which ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... penetration of pollen-tubes is not difficult, but in most cases requires some practice with dissecting under a one-tenth of an inch focal distance single lens; and just at first this will seem ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... melancholy frowning concentration upon the foot of cliffs, it is never face to face with man: he can never come within the focus of its great glancing vision. It is somewhere beyond time and space that the mighty perspective of those focal rays comes to its point; and they are so wide and eternal in their sweep that we should find their end, could we but trace them, in a condition far different from that in which our finite views and ethics ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... relation of two angles, or the image of a centaur, this stands out so clearly that it occupies the whole foreground of consciousness, while all other impressions hide themselves in the background. This single focal state of consciousness is, therefore, pre-eminently a state of attention while the former state of reverie, on account of its diffuse character, may be said to ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... negative of my father was made with 5x7 Graphic camera and a Standard Orthonon plate, using a Busch Omnar F 4.5 of ten-inch focal length, at full opening. A hazy day in the country, the ground covered with snow, a south window shaded by a veranda and my father seated in front of the window about four or five feet from it, explain the lighting. No reflector ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1921 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... DOUBLE-BODIED FOLDING CAMERA, is superior to every other form of Camera, for the Photographic Tourist, from its capability of Elongation or Contraction to any Focal Adjustment, its extreme Portability, and its adaptation for taking either Views ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... made many observations on this portion of the heavens, using a Newtonian reflector of twenty feet focal length, and an aperture of eighteen inches. With this powerful telescope he completely resolved the whitish appearance into stars, which the telescopes he had formerly used had not light enough to do. In the most vacant place to be met ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... 26th of June, 1828, the moon being nearly full, and the evening extremely fine, I was watching the second satellite of Jupiter as it gradually approached to transit the disc of the planet. My instrument was an excellent refractor of 3 3/4 inches aperture, and five feet focal length, with a power of one hundred. The satellite appeared in contact at about half-past ten, and for some minutes remained on the edge of the limb, presenting an appearance not unlike that of the lunar mountains which come into view during the first quarter of the moon, until it finally disappeared ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... we have an instance of the simplest form of astral seeing, without the necessity of the "associated object" of psychometry, or the focal point of the ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... which is being evolved there, but rather a swarm of stars. Many of the detached masses are too vast to admit of the supposition that they are to be transformed into planets, in our sense of planets, and the distances of the stars which appear to have been originally ejected from the focal masses are too great to allow us to liken the assemblage that they form to a solar system. Then, too, no nodes such as the hypothesis calls for are visible. Moreover, in most of the spiral nebul the appearances favor the view that ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... from the elevated central point of view where we now stand, and in the focal light in which we now see, that no man can be justified before God upon the ground of personal character; for that character, when subjected to God's exhaustive scrutiny, withers and shrinks away. A man may possibly be just before ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... FOLDING CAMERA, is superior to every other form of Camera, for the Photographic Tourist, from its capability of Elongation or Contraction to any Focal Adjustment, its Portability, and its adaptation for taking either Views or Portraits.—The ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... what we can no more get rid of than we can go out of ourselves. We are creatures of prejudice; we neither can nor ought to eradicate it; we must only regulate, it by reason, which regulation by reason is, indeed, little more than obliging the lesser, the focal and temporary prejudices, to give way to those which are more ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... But, just at present, what are the greatest commercial towns of the world? All ports to a man. And the day when it will be otherwise, if ever, seems still far distant. Look at the newest countries. What are their great focal points? Every one of them ports. Melbourne and Sydney; Rio, Buenos Ayres, and Valparaiso; Cape Town, San Francisco, Bombay, Calcutta, Yokohama. Chicago itself, the most vital and the quickest grower among ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... alone in the darkness, a universe in themselves. The horse's body filled the upper part of the picture; the legs, the great hoofs, frozen to stillness in the midst of their trampling, limited it on either side. And beneath lay the man, his foreshortened face at the focal point in the centre, his arms outstretched towards the sides of the picture. Under the arch of the horse's belly, between his legs, the eye looked through into an intense darkness; below, the space was closed in by the figure of the prostrate man. A central gulf of darkness surrounded ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... from television might help. You know that by means of the scanning disc, the picture is transformed into mere rapid fluctuations in the brightness of a beam of light. In a parallel manner, the focal plane of the Express Ray moves slowly through the object, progressively, dissolving layers of the thickness of a single atom, which are accurately reproduced at the other focus of the instrument—which might ...
— The Cosmic Express • John Stewart Williamson
... asked me to go into the observatory, which connects with the dwelling. They are building immense additional rooms, and are having a great telescope, twenty-seven feet in focal length, constructed. ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... Taking Views.—There have been excellent cameras introduced for taking views, but the time of exposure, which is increased in proportion to the focal length, is considered an objection; consequently many adhere to the old plan of using the speculum, or rather, substitute a mirror. I now have one which I have used for several years and find it equal to any article of the ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... position of which is determined precisely by the mean wave-length. This method is especially used with a so-called objective-grating, which consists of a series of metallic threads, stretched parallel to each other at equal intervals. On account of the diffraction of the light we now get in the focal plane of the objective, with the use of these gratings, not only a fainter image of the star at the place where it would have arisen without grating, but also at both sides of this image secondary images, the distances of which from the central ...
— Lectures on Stellar Statistics • Carl Vilhelm Ludvig Charlier
... nineteenth century there lived in the village a negro whose lungs were renowned for their power to call forth the fullness of this strange echo. "Joe Tom," as he was named, was always called upon, as the guide of lake excursions, to perform this peculiar duty. Stationing his scow at the focal point, the negro would shout across the water, "Natty Bumppo! Natty Bumppo!—Who's there?" And after a moment the cry would be flung back, as by the spirit of Leather-Stocking, from the heights of the steep woods and rocky ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... reckless submarine war going on, all part of a campaign to upset the Chancellor. Von Buelow, Ex-Chancellor, is working hard. He, however, since his row with the Emperor over the "Telegraph" interview, which he passed as correct, will never be accepted by His Majesty. Nevertheless, he is becoming a focal point ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard |
