"Astrolabe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had then recourse to his astrolabe, the oracle of Eastern science, and watching with grave precision until the precise time of the evening prayer had arrived, he sunk on his knees, with his face turned to Mecca, and recited the petitions which close the Moslemah's day of toil. The bishop and the English ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... name for a black woman. The name comes from Tasmania, appearing first in the form loubra, in a vocabulary given in the 'Voyage de Decouvertes de l'Astrolabe' (Paris, 1834), vol. vii. p. 9, and was obtained from a Tasmanian woman, belonging to Port Dalrymple on the Tamar River. It is probably a compound of the Tasmanian words loa or lowa, a woman, and proi (with variants), big. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... enterprise was fomented, and greatly facilitated in its operation, by the invention of the astrolabe, and the important discovery of the polarity of the magnet, whose first application to the purposes of navigation on an extended scale may be referred to the fifteenth century. [2] The Portuguese ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... magic astrolabe to be brought to him, whereby he knew all things that happen, and he said unto Benjamin, "I have heard that the Hebrews are acquainted with all wisdom, but dost thou know aught of this?" Benjamin answered, "Thy servant also is skilled in all wisdom, which ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... of the sextant greatly simplified taking reckonings at sea as well as facilitating taking the correct longitude of distant places. Before that time the mariner was obliged to depend upon his compass, a cross-staff, or an astrolabe, a table of the sun's declination and a correction for the altitude of the polestar, and very inadequate and incorrect charts. Such were the instruments used by Columbus and Vasco da Gama and ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... calculated on reaching a higher latitude, and, if necessary, going in sight of Clarie and Adelie Lands, whose discovery, contested by the American Wilkes, certainly belongs to the illustrious commander of the "Astrolabe" and the Zelee, ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... and to guide themselves when out of sight of land. Martin Behaim, with two physicians in the service of Prince Henry of Portugal, had also added to nautical science by discovering the way of directing the voyager's course according to the position of the sun in the heavens, and by applying the astrolabe to the purposes of navigation. These improvements being adopted, the commercial question of the western route increased daily in importance in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, countries in which three-quarters of the science is made up of imagination. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... archduke on the tranquil stream of this pleasant river, from which in a short space we shall come out upon the broad sea? But we must have already emerged and gone seven hundred or eight hundred leagues; and if I had here an astrolabe to take the altitude of the pole, I could tell thee how many we have traveled, though either I know little, or we have already crossed or shall shortly cross the equinoctial line which parts ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... you please, the barleycorn of our schoolboy days. It would also be a pleasant task to investigate the properties of the gnomon of the Chinese, Egyptians, and Peruvians, the scarphie of Eratosthenes, the astrolabe of Hipparchus, the parallactic rules of Ptolemy, Regimontanus Purbach, and Walther, the sextants and quadrants of Tycho Brahe, and the modifications of these various instruments, the invention and use of which, from century to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... much time in opening his case, and preparing his razors Instead of putting water into the basin, he took a very handsome astrolabe out of his case, and went very gravely out of my room to the middle of the court to take the height of the sun: he returned with the same grave pace, and entering my room, said, "Sir, you will be pleased to know this day is Friday the 18th of the moon Suffir, in the year 653, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... part, and the context shows that the word is here intended to bear this meaning. Again, the implements of a geomancer of the higher order would include certain astrological instruments, such as an astrolabe, star-table, etc., necessary, as I have before explained, for the elucidation of the scheme obtained by the ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... part of the Barber over him, and I have never laughed so much in my life. Poor Mrs. Waddy got her hands at her sides, and kept on gasping, 'Oh, sir! oh!' while the Barber hurried away from the half-shaved young man to consult his pretended astrolabe in the next room, where we heard him shouting the sun's altitude, and consulting its willingness for the impatient young man to be further shaved; and back he came, seeming refreshed to have learnt the sun's favourable opinion, and gabbling at an immense rate, full of barber's business. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the next stage. This too had its history, encircled as it is with a complete reef of coral, in some parts double. In the year 1785, two French vessels, which were commanded by Count La Perouse, and named 'La Boussole' and 'L'Astrolabe,' had set forth from Brest on a voyage of discovery in the Pacific. They made a most discursive survey of that ocean, from Kamtschatka southwards, and at the end of 1787 were at the Samoan Isles, then unconverted, and where their two boats' crews were massacred, and the boats lost. The ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... least in their writings, it may be also in their lives. Their studies were the same, philosophy and philology. Both of them were knowing in astronomy, of which Ovid's books of the Roman feasts, and Chaucer's treatise of the Astrolabe, are sufficient witnesses. But Chaucer was likewise an astrologer, as were Virgil, Horace, Persius, and Manilius. Both writ with wonderful facility and clearness: neither were great inventors; for Ovid only copied the Grecian fables; and most of Chaucer's ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... eight parts, devoted respectively to theology, astronomy, pharmacy, hygiene, venereal diseases, botany, cosmography, and chemistry. It is illustrated with several plates, among them the picture of an astrolabe and one of the human body treated as a house. From the numerous editions through which it passed (Venice, 1707, 1715, 1728, 1769), we may conclude that it met ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... hoary astrologer went off in the direction of Stonehenge, whose stones formed his astrolabe, and the hare, much excited with the communication she had received (confirmed as it was too by the facts of the case), resolved to at once warn the monarch of his danger. Calling a beetle, she charged him with a message to the king: ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... namely, that with his knowledge of Latin and of French, and living in a circle where those two languages were in great favour, he wrote solely in English. His prose, like his verse, his "Treatise on the Astrolabe" like his tales, are in English. He belongs to the English nation, and that is why he writes in that language; a reason of that sort is sufficient for him: "Suffyse to thee thise trewe conclusiouns in English, as wel as suffyseth to thise noble clerkes Grekes thise same conclusiouns in ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... lectures of the university, he became (says Leland) "a ready logician, a smooth rhetorician, a pleasant poet, a great philosopher, an ingenious mathematician, and a holy divine. That he was a great master in astronomy, is plain by his discourses of the Astrolabe. That he was versed in hermetic philosophy (which prevailed much at that time), appears by his Tale of the Chanons Yeoman: His knowledge in divinity is evident from his Parson's Tale, and his philosophy from the Testament of Love." Thus qualified ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber |
