"Chronometer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Master, glancing at the chronometer that hung beside the air-rules. "Time enough to get settled, later. Every second counts, now. We're due to start in seven minutes, you know. Rrisa will attend to all this. We three have got to be getting forward ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... longitude sailed there is four minutes' difference of clock-time," Scott proceeded. "You know that a chronometer is a timepiece so nicely constructed and cared for, that it practically keeps perfect time. Meridians are imaginary great circles, and we are always on one of them. With our sextants we find when the centre of the sun is on the celestial meridian corresponding to the terrestrial one; and ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... navigation; so that he was shortly able not only to take meridional observations correctly (or to shoot the sun, as midshipmen call it), and to work a day's work as well as anyone, but to use the chronometer and to ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... be added elemental dangers of all kinds, such as the tides and shallows of the North Sea—the shallow waters contiguous to the coast being chiefly navigated—dangers against which neither compass nor chronometer was then available. Even buoys and lighthouses were comparatively rare or inadequate at a time when nautical knowledge itself was still extremely defective. It was therefore not astonishing that shipwrecks were of daily occurrence and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... weary way. Commander Peary took his sights from the time our chronometer-watches gave, and I, knowing that we had kept on going in practically a straight line, was sure that we had more than covered the necessary distance to insure our arrival at the ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... seaman has, for he was trained on a sailing ship and had won many prizes in the regattas at Kiel. "But we had hardly any instruments," he narrated, "we had only one sextant and two chronometers on board, but a chronometer journal was lacking. Luckily I found an old 'Indian Ocean Directory' of 1882 on board; its information went back to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... East. The variation of the needle amounted to 3 deg. East, its inclination to 9 deg. 28'. As the longitude of Cape Frio has been variously laid down, I took much pains to ascertain it exactly. By a very good chronometer, I found the difference between Cape Frio and Botafogo 1 deg. 6' 20"; so that the true longitude of Cape Frio from Greenwich must be ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... perhaps higher. I once went to a ball with as free and easy, heart-whole a young fellow as any I know, and agreed with him to stay half an hour, and then come away and play pool. In twenty-five minutes by my watch, which keeps time like a ship's chronometer, that man was in the tragic or cut-throat stage of the passion with a pretty little thing of forty, a cattledealer's widow, who stopped HIS pool-playing for a time, until she married the great ironmonger in George Street. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... a bad habit. Because they have taken mine is no reason why I should take yours. Besides, I have a chronometer here that satisfies me ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... she knew that he had no clock in his room, and only awoke when his mother knocked at his door each morning. She hoped that in this case he wouldn't look at his watch, or if he did, he would have no faith in the uncertain old chronometer he was carrying at present, and anyway it wouldn't be believed against the testimony of all the other timepieces in ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... and larger, anxious eyes swiveled back and forth from the scanner screen to the steady sweeping hand of the chronometer. Roger bit his lip ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... Southern Ocean rollers. The next morning, though, it lightened again, and we had a brief spell of fine weather until noon, when we had another buster of it. This occurred just as Captain Snaggs was getting ready to take the sun, and sent the first-mate down in the cabin to look at the chronometer, and 'stand by' in order to note the time when he sung out 'Stop!' so as to ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the sun actually did set earlier at Alexandria than it would in a city which lay a hundred miles to the west? There was no telegraph wire by which astronomers at the two Places could communicate. There was no chronometer or watch which could be transported from place to place; there was not any other reliable contrivance for the keeping of time. Ptolemy's ingenuity, however, pointed out a thoroughly satisfactory method by which the times of sunset at two places could be compared. He was ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... run. And thus, to quote the words of the observer who "had looked farther into space than ever human being did before him,"[56] the state into which the incessant action of the clustering power has brought the Milky Way at present, is a kind of chronometer that may be used to measure the time of its past and future existence; and although we do not know the rate of going of this mysterious chronometer, it is nevertheless certain that, since the breaking-up of the ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... sent the boat back. That night eleven convicts escaped, seized the boat, and were launching her when they were challenged by a sentry. One of them replied that they were going for Mr. Cunningham, and they got away though they were fired upon. They did go for Mr. Cunningham, and robbed him of his chronometer, pistols, tent, and provisions. Then they sailed away, and were picked up by a whaler, which they seized and finally scuttled. The Government refused to compensate Cunningham for his loss, and he had to replace ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... added Washburn, consulting the chronometer. "This is exactly where we ought to be at this time," and he made the entry on ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... chronometer," replied Captain Nemo. "If to-morrow, the 21st of March, the disc of the sun, allowing for refraction, is exactly cut by the northern horizon, it will show that I am ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... instrument has been examined by the academy of music here, who were so well satisfied of its utility, that they have ordered all music which shall be printed here, in future, to have the movements numbered in correspondence with this plexi-chronometer. I need not tell you that the numbers between two movements, as between 22 and 36, give the quicker or slower degrees of the movements, such as the quick andante, or moderate allegro. The instrument is useful, but still it may be greatly simplified. I got him to make me one, and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... frequently cast them off from my feet in my botanical investigations, without having time to pick them up, when threatened by the approach of lions, men, or hyenas. My excellent watch, owing to the short duration of my movements, was also on these occasions an admirable chronometer. I wanted, besides, a sextant, a few philosophical instruments, and some books. To purchase these things, I made several unwilling journeys to London and Paris, choosing a time when I could be hid by the favouring clouds. As all my ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... thought could not fail to be of service to them. They were also introduced to Captain Owen and to Mr. Lander, the value of whose experience in planning their operations was obvious. And the expedition being brought under the notice of his majesty's government, the loan of a chronometer was obtained for it, with strong letters of introduction and recommendation to the officers commanding the naval and military forces of the crown ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... and as soon as we were near enough I caught up the rope, made the leap, and threw the bight over a projection, where I held the boat while Jack and Jones bailed rapidly and set things in order so that we could go to the assistance of the Canonita. The Major's Jurgenssen chronometer had stopped at ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... rapidly as the ocean swallows the ripple from the wings of an expiring insect. Sir William Herschel says of the galaxy of the milky way:— "We do not know the rate of progress of this mysterious chronometer, but it is nevertheless ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... darkening. It was one of Peggy's inherited treasures, and she reverenced it next to her Bible. The glass had been broken and mended with putty, which formed a dark, diagonal line across the venerable crystal. This antique chronometer occupied the central place on the mantel-piece, its gliding sands, though voiceless, for ever whispering of ebbing time and everlasting peace. "Passing away, passing away," seemed continually issuing from each meeting cone. I have no doubt the contemplation ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Besides his observation that "in going from London to Greenwich we must not go round by Inverness," he said, "We must not become too complicated with our machinery. Remember the get-at-ability of parts. If we go on as some mechanics are doing, we shall soon be boiling our eggs with a chronometer!" ...] that comes forth from our workshops, and merely show the mastery we possess over materials and mechanical forms. The original of this measuring machine of Maudslay's was exhibited at the Loan Collection at South Kensington in 1878. It is now treasured up, with ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... engagements, and of the worry and distress to patients and their friends which the want of it occasions? One of my old teachers always carried two watches, to make quite sure of being exact, and not only kept his appointments with the regularity of a chronometer, but took great pains to be at his patient's house at the time when he had reason to believe he was expected, even if no express appointment was made. It is a good rule; if you call too early, my lady's hair may not be so smooth as could be ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Brown, our night watchman (whose fame for trustworthiness was utterly blasted for the rest of the voyage) and in such a way as to bring the profoundest possible trouble to all the blameless souls animating that ship. He stole eleven golden sovereigns, and a gold pocket chronometer and chain. I am really in doubt whether the crime should not be entered under the category of sacrilege rather than theft. Those things belonged to the captain! There was certainly something in the nature of the violation of a sanctuary, and ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... their hauling nets contained battered chisels, hammers, saws for metal, a radiation counter, a beaten-up-looking pistol, some old position-finding instruments, including a wristwatch that had seen much better days to be used as a chronometer. There were also two large flasks of water and two month-supply boxes of dehydrated space-gruel—these last items obviously granted them from their own, now vanished stores. Here was weird generosity—or perhaps just more ghoulish fun ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... not the clock that strikes the loudest that keeps the best time. The expensive chronometer works steadily along doing its work well and faithfully. It does not attract as much attention as the gilt clock with its sweet chimes, but men who know things are aware that the chronometer has the more real merit. Have the chronometer for your ideal and not the fancy ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... marked on the quadrant give the latitude of the ship at the moment of meridian. The ship's time is then made to correspond, that is to say, it must indicate 12 o'clock, M., after which it is compared with the chronometer's Greenwich time, and the difference enables the observer to determine the longitude. As fifteen miles are allowed to the minute, there will be nine hundred miles to the hour. The importance of absolute correctness in the chronometer will ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... in the next instant was thrust away into the dusk again. But that ship, that captain, and that pregnant instant had had their work appointed for them in the dawn of time and could not fail of the performance. The chronometer of God never errs!" ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... chance; no such thing. Go when you will to the chasse a l'affut, station yourself in whichever part of the forest you like, be assured the fly will be there; it was never otherwise. The question is, who sends the fly? how does it know the sportsman? and by what mysterious chronometer does it regulate with such exactness its movements? Chi lo sa? He who doth not let a sparrow fall to the ground without He willeth it. Equally incomprehensible is the departure of this little insect, which, the concert over, and when you are thoroughly ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... rhetoric. But I did not make any apologies. I told them simply of the dangers of lee-shores. I told them when they were most dangerous,— when seamen came upon them unawares. I explained to them that, though the costly chronometer, frequently adjusted, made a delusive guide to the voyager who often made a harbor, still the adjustment was treacherous, the instrument beyond the use of the poor, and that, once astray, its error increased forever. I said ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... "Bless my chronometer! That will delay things," said the odd man with a sigh. "But I suppose there is no hope for it," and he proceeded to open the box, while Tom, Ned, the circus man and Eradicate busied themselves over the hundred and ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... this time Siemens had several irons in the fire. Besides the printing process and the chronometric governor, which operated by the differential movement between the engine and a chronometer, he was occupied with some minor improvements at Hoyle's Calico Printing Works. He also engaged in railway works from time to time; and in 1846 he brought out a double cylinder air-pump, in which the two cylinders are so combined, that the compressing ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... "raining cats and dogs"? Hailing omnibuses. When is butter like Irish children? When it is made into little pats. Why is a chronometer like thingumbob? ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... wears another air. They are not so Rhadamanthine as we thought. Something that we can only call a dignified panic presides over their deliberations. They have one idea to lighten the ship. "Overboard with the ballast, the main-mast, and the chronometer!" is the cry. In the last war they got rid (first) of the honour of their respective countries, and (second) of all idea that Samoa was to be governed in a manner consistent with civilisation, or Government troops punished for any conceivable misconduct. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... if you are not better—well, before the end of the week, take my advice, and run down to Brighton over Sunday. Now, you ought to give me a guinea for that," he added, laughing. "I assure you, all the gold-headed cane, all the wonderful chronometer doctors who pocket thousands per annum at the West End, could make no more of your case than ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... without regard to a certain genial and historical value which they had acquired. The face of the clock, coated with verdigris as thick as a diachylon plaister, was rubbed till the figures emerged into day; while, inside the case of the same chronometer, the cobwebs that formed triangular hammocks, which the pendulum could hardly wade through, were cleared away at ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... the edge of the cockpit. There was little conversation, and in order to divert his companion, Norman manufactured a job for Paul by assigning to him the duty of watching the engine revolution gauge and the chronometer. ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... steam-whistle. I dared not be certain, but I knew that the men at the whaling-station would be called from their beds about that time. Descending to the camp I told the others, and in intense excitement we watched the chronometer for seven o'clock, when the whalers would be summoned to work. Right to the minute the steam-whistle came to us, borne clearly on the wind across the intervening miles of rock and snow. Never had any one of us heard sweeter music. It was the first ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... the watch too; it was a hundred-guinea chronometer, a masterpiece of Benson's workmanship; and Mr. Dunbar's arms were emblazoned upon the back. There was a locket attached to the massive gold chain, the locket which contained ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... as the brightest of all possible pole stars. These data give us some idea of the extent of the motions which, divided into infinitely small portions of time, proceed without intermission in the great chronometer of the universe. If for a moment we could yield to the power of fancy, and imagine the acuteness of our visual organs to be made equal with the extremest bounds of telescopic vision, and bring together that which is now divided by long periods ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... types in about eight out of eleven or twelve successive geological layers. But the story would take too long to tell. However, it is well to start with an example that is primarily geological. For it is the geologist who provides the pre-historic chronometer. Pre-historians have to reckon in geological time—that is to say, not in years, but in ages of indefinite extent corresponding to marked changes in the condition of the earth's surface. It takes the plain man a long time to find out that it is no use asking the pre-historian, who is proudly displaying ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... minutes, then a renewal of the hurricane was almost certainly to be expected. Without the loss of a moment he gave his orders. The boats were made ready; into one they put arms, ammunition, and tools, together with the ship's papers and chronometer, a compass, and Dr. Thesiger Smith's specimens and diaries; into the other more ammunition, and a portion of what provisions could be collected from above or below water. The boats were lowered, the men dropped into them and pulled off, ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... whether measured by the Martian chronometer aboard the Nomad or by Carr's watch, which he was regulating to match the slightly longer day of the red planet. He was becoming proficient in the operation of all mechanisms of the ship and had developed a fondness ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... the clock I purchased for the Sultan of Sakkatou, to give him instead of the chronometer. When it strikes the hours, I tell them it speaks various languages, at which ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... Dane's eyes flicked over the gages, checking in routine precaution. He started when he saw the V of the chronometer's hands. Only six minutes had passed since the battle's start—it seemed hours. And already the reserve was being called on! He was suddenly cold. Out there, over the bay, the enemy forces had ceased their advance. The American first line cones were gone—true enough, but the support fleet was ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... the chronometer, that is, a watch that can be trusted to keep a steady rate for long periods, was at this time completed by Harrison; but very few had been manufactured, and astronomers and sailors were slow to believe in the efficacy of this method of carrying time about with ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... should present you with a most delicately adjusted chronometer,—one which would not vary a second in a year—do you think it would pay you to trifle with it, to open the case in the dust, to leave it out in the rain overnight, or to put in a drop of glue or a chemical which would ruin the delicacy of its adjustment so that it would no longer keep good time? ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Haj Beshir that I would start to-day, be the consequence what it might. So off I went to the Shereef, and told him I must go at once, to follow the Kashalla, who had taken away the box in which was the chronometer, and I must go to wind it up early in the morning. He immediately informed the Sarkee, and asked for a soldier. A soldier was forthwith brought, and a message from the Sarkee, that the horse which had been sent for ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... watchmaker's emporium next door to the post office t'other day and has a most fascinating window. It has four alarm clocks, three pairs of cuff-links and a chronometer in it! Oh, it's swell! Do you realise, Don, that slowly but surely our little village is taking on the—the semblance of a metropolis? All we want is a ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... intellect, and experience, may be deeply prejudiced, and that their judgment in matters where their prejudices are involved cannot thenceforward be trusted. Watches, as electricians know to their cost, are liable to have their steel work accidentally magnetised, and the best chronometer under those conditions can never again be trusted ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... channel so full of large boulder stones, that the men were frequently up to the waist in ice-cold water whilst lifting or launching the boat over these impediments. Their landing-place was found to be in latitude 66 deg. 32' 1" north. The rate of the chronometer had become so irregular that it could not be depended upon for finding the longitude, and during ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Hall in Cheshire, where they lived a quiet retired life, spending a good deal of their time with their friends Sir Charles and Lady Holte at Brereton. Edgeworth amused himself by making a clock for the steeple at Brereton, and a chronometer of a singular construction, which, he says,'I intended to present to the King ... to add to His Majesty's collection of uncommon clocks and watches which I had seen ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... stream. He spoke not a word, and was apparently dying. Over him stood the first mate, eyeing him with an expression of fiendish derision, and deliberately searching his pockets, from which he presently drew forth a large wallet and a chronometer. Seven of the crew (among whom was the cook, a negro) were rummaging the staterooms on the larboard for arms, where they soon equipped themselves with muskets and ammunition. Besides Augustus and Captain Barnard, there were nine men altogether in the cabin, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... time to fall. And the spectrum at once tells what the jets are composed of, whether hydrogen, gaseous iron, calcium, or anything else. Prof. C. A. Young saw a jet of hydrogen ascend a distance of 200,000 miles, measured its height, noted its spectrum and timed its ascent by a chronometer all at once, and was astonished to find the velocity one hundred and sixty miles per second—eight times faster than the earth flies on its orbit. By these improvements solar hurricanes, whirlpools, and explosions can be seen from any physical ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... of Audubon's works here alluded to, was the same, we opine, as that generously presented by the illustrious savant to Mr. Martyn, chronometer-maker, St Peter street,—an ardent ornithologist, whose roof sheltered the great naturalist, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... saves time. I haven't got to take my turn with the rest, in there,"—he indicated the church with his thumb,—"and you haven't got to make an appointment. You have got a clear forty minutes before the Angelus rings," he added, consulting a large silver chronometer, "and I reckon I kin git through my part of the job inside of twenty, leaving you ten minutes for remarks. I ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... The choice had fallen upon the right man. The rest of mankind that did not command the sixteen-knot steel steamer Ossa were rather poor creatures. He had saved lives at sea, had rescued ships in distress, had a gold chronometer presented to him by the underwriters, and a pair of binoculars with a suitable inscription from some foreign Government, in commemoration of these services. He was acutely aware of his merits and of his rewards. I liked him well enough, though some I know—meek, friendly ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... approvingly as she kneels). Ah, quite so. Do not disturb her, Mr. Brudenell: that will do very nicely. (Brudenell nods also, and withdraws a little, watching her sympathetically. Burgoyne resumes his former position, and takes out a handsome gold chronometer.) Now then, are those preparations made? We must not ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw |
