|
|
|
More "Optical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at Greenwich was any optical search undertaken; but Professor Airy wrote to ask M. Leverrier the same old question that he had fruitlessly put to Adams: Did the new theory explain the errors of the radius vector or not? The reply of Leverrier was both prompt and satisfactory—these ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... which he had been labouring since 1901. But the dream of his life was not yet realised. No direct method of obtaining response record was yet obtained. Hitherto the response recorder employed was a modification of the optical lever, automatic records being secured by the very inconvenient and tedious process of photography (which again introduced complications by subjecting a plant to darkness and thereby modifying its normal excitability); and the plant was not automatically ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... as to listen. You know that optical instruments have acquired great perfection; with certain instruments we have succeeded in obtaining enlargements of 6,000 times and reducing the moon to within forty miles' distance. Now, at this distance, any objects sixty feet square would be ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... evidence question, to quote the number of Christ's appearances, to speak of the five hundred witnesses of whom she was weary of hearing. Her mind was proof against all this; what could be more probable than that a number of devoted followers should be the victims of some optical delusion, especially when their minds were disturbed by grief. Here was a miracle supported on one side by the testimony of five hundred and odd spectators all longing to see their late Master, and contradicted on the other side by common sense and the experience of the remainder of the human ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Chaldeans knew the true nature of comets, and could foretell their reappearance. "A lens of considerable power was found in the ruins of Babylon; it was an inch and a half in diameter and nine-tenths of an inch thick." (Layard's "Nineveh and Babylon," pp. 16,17.) Nero used optical glasses when he watched the fights of the gladiators; they are supposed to have come from Egypt and the East. Plutarch speaks of optical instruments used by Archimedes "to manifest to the eye the largeness of the sun." "There are actual astronomical calculations in existence, with calendars formed ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... analogical order, till the smallest conceivable "vital unit" is reached in the universe of organic matter. To begin, therefore, with microscopic observation, at a point in the ephemeromorphic world where that optical instrument fails to give back any intelligible answer, and synthetically follow this chain of causation upward and outward to Dr. Tyndall's "fiery cloud of mist," in which it is assumed that all the diversified possibilities and potentialities ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... passes obliquely into another of either greater or less density it is bent at the point of incidence. This bending or breaking is called refraction. The apparent bend in a stick set sloping in a sheet of water is due to this phenomenon, as are also many mirages and other optical illusions. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... more solidly useful articles. Various kinds of iron, copper, zinc, lead, silver, and gold ores are displayed, with oils, quartz, stones, coal, &c. There are lanterns on a new plan, microscopes, barometers, optical and philosophical instruments, farming implements, machines for melting metals;—besides hundreds of other articles which we cannot stop to notice more particularly. There are two or three very interesting ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... optical illusions, a thousand aberrations of judgment, a thousand deviations, in which his thought ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... possibly know. Such a crystal has recently been found, and is now owned by Mr. Appleman. It takes about four or five years to grind and polish it. Most of the polishing, as you may or may not know, is done by the hand—smoothing it with the thumb and forefinger. The time, judgment, and skill of an optical expert is required. To-day, unfortunately, that is not cheap. The laborer is worthy of his hire, however, I suppose"—he waved a soft, full, white hand—"and forty thousand is little enough. It would be a great honor if the University ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... on optical delusions, but Mrs. Berry described him as the Colossus who had marched them into the library, and vowed that he had recognized her and quaked. "Time ain't aged him," said Mrs. Berry, "whereas me! he've got his excuse now. I know ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... boy to seek his livelihood, he resisted the inducements which on all sides were urged upon him to come forward in the world; refusing pensions, legacies, money in many forms, he maintained himself with grinding glasses for optical instruments, an art which he had been taught in early life, and in which he excelled the best workmen in Holland; and when he died, which was at the early age of forty-four, the affection with which he was regarded showed itself singularly in the endorsement of a tradesman's ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... and nearer, gathering and massing beneath my feet and filling the Tenaya Canyon. Then the sun shone free, lighting the pearly gray surface of the cloud-like sea and making it glow. Gazing, admiring, I was startled to see for the first time the rare optical phenomenon of the "Specter of the Brocken." My shadow, clearly outlined, about half a mile long, lay upon this glorious white surface with startling effect. I walked back and forth, waved my arms and struck all sorts of attitudes, to ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... position of any point of our image; hence in order to locate the image of the top of the arrow, we need to consider but one more ray from the top of the object. The most convenient ray to choose would be one passing through O, the optical center of the lens, because such a ray passes through the lens unchanged in direction, as is clear from Figure 74. The point where AC and AO meet after refraction will be the position of the top of the arrow. Similarly it can be shown that the center of the arrow will be at the point ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... Cant. vi. already quoted, "Clear as the sun," may be taken as equivalent to "spotless." That is its ordinary appearance to the naked eye, though from time to time—far more frequently than most persons have any idea—there are spots upon the sun sufficiently large to be seen without any optical assistance. Thus in the twenty years from 1882 to 1901 inclusive, such a phenomenon occurred on the average once in each week. No reference to the existence of sun-spots occurs in Scripture. Nor is this surprising, for it would not have fallen within the purpose of Scripture to record ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... swiftly over the water, the moment she had ended her conference with Hetty, and had come to the determination to return. Still no ark was seen. Several times the sisters fancied they saw it, looming up in the obscurity, like a low black rock; but on each occasion it was found to be either an optical illusion, or some swell of the foliage on the shore. After a search that lasted half an hour, the girls were forced to the unwelcome conviction that the ark had departed. Most young women would have felt the awkwardness of their situation, in a physical sense, under the circumstances in which ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... sharp and well cut, but their faces are not perfectly plane, and their slight convexity is a proof of the attention the Egyptians paid to the construction of their monuments. If their faces were plane they would appear concave to the eye; the convexity compensates for this optical illusion. The hieroglyphical inscriptions are in a perpendicular line, sometimes there is but one in the middle of the breadth of the face, and often there are three. The inscription was a commemoration by the king who had the temple ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... smiths of Datchet were in daily requisition, and, as soon as patterns for tools and mirrors were ready, my brother went to town to have them cast, and, during the three or four months ALEXANDER could be absent from Bath, the mirrors and optical parts were ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... without a corkscrew. I have tried it. I've about decided that the main reason why so many large lies are told about the number of trout caught all over the country, is that at the moment the sportsman pulls his game out of the water, he labors under some kind of an optical illusion, by reason of which he sees about nine trout where he ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... discovery of its principle. For a long time after its existence was familiar to every ball-player and spectator of the game, there were wise men who proclaimed its impossibility, who declared it to be simply an "optical delusion," and its believers the victims of the pitcher's trickery. It was only after the curve had been practically demonstrated to them, in a way which left no room for doubt, that they consented to find for it a ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... and south sides are new. The golden angel on the summit is the old one restored, with the novelty, to her, as to us, of being set on a pivot to act as a vane. I made this discovery for myself, after being puzzled by what might have been fancied changes of posture from day to day, due to optical illusion. One of the shopkeepers on the Square, who has the campanile before his eye continually, replied, however, when I asked him if the figure was fixed or movable, "Fixed." This double duty of the new campanile angel—to shine in golden glory over the city and also to tell the wind—must ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... learned, that Sun junior, viz., the newspaper, did sometimes indulge in fibbing. The ancient prejudice about the solar truth broke down, therefore, in that instance; and who knows but Sun senior may be detected, now that our optical glasses are so much improved, in similar practices? in which case he may have only been "keeping his hand in" when operating upon that one feature of the mouth. The rest of the portrait, we all agree, does credit to his talents, showing that he is still wide-awake, and not at ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... upon the black spot, and she had a great deal of trouble in the matter of focusing, pulling out and pushing in the smaller cylinder in a manner which showed that she was not accustomed to the use of this optical instrument. ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... is a necessary part of the optical outfit. Its purpose is to collect the beam of parallel rays of light reflected by the plane mirror, by virtue of a short focus system of lenses, into a cone of large aperture (reducible at will by means of an ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... delicate white hand—so placed between the light and the deed as to obscure the spot on which he was engaged. The unaccountable hand, however, was gone almost as soon as noticed." The clerk concluding that this was some optical delusion, proceeded with his work, and had come to the clause wherein the Master of Draycot disinherited his son, when again the same ghostly hand was thrust between the light ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... which we shall find those ugliest which have in them no expression nor life whatever, but a corpse-like stare, or an indefinite meaningless glaring, as in some lights, those of owls and cats, and mostly of insects and of all creatures in which the eye seems rather an external, optical instrument than a bodily member through which emotion and virtue of soul may be expressed, (as pre-eminently in the chameleon,) because the seeming want of sensibility and vitality in a living creature is the most painful of all wants. And next to these in ugliness come the eyes that ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... great Masters in Florence and in Rome. Till we have discovered some intellectual daguerreotype, which takes off the course of thought, and the form, lineaments, and features of truth, as completely and minutely, as the optical instrument reproduces the sensible object; we must come to the teachers of wisdom to learn wisdom, we must repair to the fountain, and drink there. Portions of it may go from thence to the ends of the earth by means ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... by a succession of optical questions, which are discussed and answered in true scholastic style, with no little acuteness of observation. Thus: "Utrum visus fiat intus suscipiendo?" Is vision accomplished by something received into the eye? "Utrum color fit de nocte?" Does color exist at night? ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... scene or scenery; an optical device which gave a distortion to the picture unless seen from a particular point; a relief, modelled to produce an ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... in factory, in foundry, in laboratory, and chemical works, of which they were physically capable; in making of gauges, forging billets, making fuses, cartridges, bullets—"look what they can do," said a foreman, "ladies from homes where they sat about and were waited upon." They also made optical glass; drilled and tapped in the shipyards; renewed electric wires and fittings, wound armatures; lacquered guards for lamps and radiator fronts; repaired junction and section boxes, fire control instruments, automatic searchlights. "We can hardly believe our eyes," said another foreman, ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... amassing enough nerve to propose to Alice Faraday: and, now that he had drawn her away from the throng to this secluded nook and was about to put his fortune to the test, a horrible fear swept over him that he had overdone it. He was having optical illusions. ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... intellectual energy are they inferior to any of their contemporaries, or to their own great progenitors. "Holland," says Professor Thorold Rogers, "is the origin of scientific medicine and rational therapeutics. From Holland came the first optical instruments, the best mathematicians, the most intelligent philosophers, as well as the boldest and most original thinkers. Amsterdam and Rotterdam held the printing presses of Europe in the early days of the republic; the Elzevirs were the ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... the vision immediately upon your full awakening—all well-known features of incubus," replied Mr. Berners. But again he thought of the shadow he had seen; now, however, only to dismiss the subject as an optical illusion. ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... dry mornings of these regions, a curious optical phenomena may be observed, of a sunrise in the west, and sunset in the east. In either case, bright and well-defined beams rise to the zenith, often crossing to the opposite horizon. It is a beautiful feature in the firmament, and equally visible whether the horizon be cloudy ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... The only chance of a shot is as the bird passes a gap—visible while flying a yard—just time to pull the trigger. But I would rather have that chance than have to fire between the bars of a gate; for the horizontal lines cause an optical illusion, making the object appear in a different position from what it really is in, and half the pellets are sure to be buried in the rails. Wood-pigeons, when eagerly stuffing their crops with ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... I could be in either place by a sort of mental shift, something like staring at one of the geometrical optical illusions you can find in any psychology textbook in the chapter on illusions, and seeing it become ...
— The Gallery • Roger Phillips Graham
... figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their momentary footsteps on beams of light. Though she had some indistinct idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed sway over the spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to look forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were answered, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have known these four years that I am to die at the time I mentioned, although I am sure, when I tell you how I came to know it, you will call me superstitious. For you fellows of the present day are so sceptical and matter-of-fact that you refuse to believe in anything that cannot be proved by optical inspection or by evidence. It was, as I said, just four years ago, on my ninety-third birthday, when St. John the Nepomuc appeared to me in a dream, and said—'Dionysius, my good fellow, make the best of your time! There are only five more years for you in store, and then you must die! no help ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... one say that matter must obstruct or dim the senses of the soul; that a body must act as a veil to the spirit, and shut out much knowledge. It is not so here. Matter helps us in the acquisition of knowledge, as, for example, glass in optical instruments. The telescope, with its lenses, gives the eye vast compass; the microscope gives it a power, equally wonderful, of minute vision. True, in these cases it is matter helping matter—glass assisting the eye; the ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... atmosphere is bulged out sufficiently to affect the barometer at certain hours every day,) give that peculiarity of form in certain positions of the planet in its orbit. Justice to Sir Wm. Herschel requires that his observations shall not be attributed to optical illusions. This view, however, which may be true in the case of Saturn, would be absurd when applied to the earth, as has been done within the present century. From these considerations, it is at least possible, that the density of Saturn may be very little less, or even greater ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... enable any manipulator who is about to enlarge (or reduce) a copy any given number of times to do so without troublesome calculation. It is assumed that the photographer knows exactly what the focus of his lens is, and that he is able to measure accurately from its optical center. The use of the table will be seen from the following illustration: A photographer has a carte to enlarge to four times its size, and the lens he intends employing is one of 6 inches equivalent focus. He must therefore look for 4 on the ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant
... individual. Longer gastroscopes are used, when necessary, to explore a ptosed stomach. Various lens-system gastroscopes have been devised, which afford an excellent view of the walls of the air-inflated stomach. The optical system, however, interferes with the insertion of instruments, so that the open-tube gastroscope is required for the removal of gastric foreign bodies, the palpation of, or sponging secretions from, gastric ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... loss of her bachelor roomers and, as she said to her neighbor across the street, she kept one memento of them—a thing that looked like a shell but wasn't a shell. She thought it must be one of them optical illusion things. ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... too, using an optical symbolism, we may speak of the Sulphite as being refractive—every impression made upon him is split up into component rays of thought—he sees beauty, humor, pathos, horror, and sublimity. The ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... colors and forms of things. What is called the musical scale, or octave, is fixed in the original appointments of sound just as absolutely and definitely as the colors of the rainbow or prism in the optical properties and laws of light. And the visible objects of the world are not more certainly shaped and colored to us under the exact laws of light and the prism, than they are tempered and toned, as objects audible, to give distinctions of sound by their vibrations in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... driving-rods in palm oil, and the great drops drummed down upon the awning and drowned the fire in our pipes. After these storms, as though it were being pushed up from below, the river seemed to rise in the centre, to become convex. By some optical illusion, it seemed to fall away on either hand to the depth of ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... was blurred, for a while, by the smoke from so much firing, which floated in thickening clouds over all the open spaces and the edges of the forest. It produced curious optical illusions. The French loomed through it, increased fourfold in numbers, every individual man magnified in size. He saw them lurid and gigantic, pulling the triggers of their rifles or muskets, or working the batteries. The cannon also grew from twelve-pounders or eighteen-pounders ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... treating such stories—the first is to deny their truth, which is, to say the least, not only grossly uncharitable, but an absurd and impertinent caprice adopted in order to reject unpleasant evidence; the second is to account for them by an optical delusion, accidentally synchronising with the event, which seems to me a most monstrous ignoring of the law of chances; a third is to account for them by the existence of some exquisite faculty, (existing in different degrees of intensity, and in some people not existing ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... the speculations of the old Greek thinkers. Galilei (1564-1642) enlarged the Copernican system with the aid of the telescope; and the telescope was an outcome of the new study of optics which had been inspired in Roger Bacon and other medieval scholars by the optical works, directly founded on the Greek, of the Spanish Moors. Giordano Bruno still further enlarged the system; he pictured the universe boldly as an infinite ocean of liquid ether, in which the stars, with retinues of inhabited ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... the pearl's owner; "and I like people that like the real thing. A pearl of the first water is real. There's no sham there; no deception—except the iridescence, which is, as you doubtless know, an optical illusion attributable to the intervention of rays of light reflected from microscopic corrugations of the nacreous surface. But for that our eye is to blame, not ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... ferns growing out of every crevice in its ragged but perpendicular sides. At its feet is a cleft about 60 feet long, 16 wide, and 18 deep, full of water at a temperature of 90 degrees. This has an absolute transparency of a singular kind, and perpetrates wonderful optical illusions. Every thing put into it is transformed. The rocks, broken timber, and old cocoa nuts which lie below it, are a frosted blue; the dusky skins of natives are changed to alabaster; and as my companion, in a light print holuku, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... tree. To a great extent all this elaborate staging has been the death of dramatic art. Among the Elizabethans, the interest depended solely on the action and the acting, on the piece and its language. All these must be excellent. They were not yet considered inferior to those of optical effect. The Elizabethans listened with their minds, not solely ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... on the other hand, the place of the different instruments will be determined by a classification according to methods, such as weighing and measuring, observations of time, optical and electrical methods of observation, ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... reeled, an accidental ray of light broke upon him in a way not now intelligible, or barely intelligible. Half the extreme breadth intercepted between the circle and oval was 429/100,000 of the radius, and he remembered that the "optical inequality" of Mars was also about 429/100,000. This coincidence, in his own words, woke him out of sleep; and for some reason or other impelled him instantly to try making the planet oscillate in the diameter of its epicycle ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... appearance—as I observed to William and Coleridge, something like the Tor of Glastonbury from the Dorsetshire hills. Right before us, on the flat island mentioned before, were several small single trees or shrubs, growing at different distances from each other, close to the shore, but some optical delusion had detached them from the land on which they stood, and they had the appearance of so many little vessels sailing along the coast of it. I mention the circumstance, because, with the ghostly image of Dumbarton Castle, and the ambiguous ruin on the small ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... on Mars may be only an optical illusion was demonstrated in an article in the Sunday magazine of the New York Times, by means of material obtained from a report of the section for the Observation of Mars, a division of the ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... by a curious optical effect, the spectators always see themselves in the personages who are good, tender, generous, heroic whom we place on the boards; and in the personages who are vicious or ridiculous they never see anyone but their neighbors. How can you expect then that the truth we tell them can ...
— How to Write a Play - Letters from Augier, Banville, Dennery, Dumas, Gondinet, - Labiche, Legouve, Pailleron, Sardou, Zola • Various
... ain't fooling, Miss Rhody," said the cowpuncher earnestly. "When me and my roan come up this fur and seen we didn't see nothin', I was plumb twisted. Says I to me: 'Here, Tom Collins, is where you got to go an' see a spectacles man 'cause you got optical delusions' And I ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... for most of the spherical-shaped objects reported, as already mentioned, is that they are meteorological or similar type balloons. This, however, does not explain reports that they travel at high speed or maneuver rapidly. But 'Saucer' men point out that the movement could be explained away as an optical illusion or actual acceleration of the balloon caused by a gas leak and later exaggerated by observers. . . . There are scores of possible explanations for the scores ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... not the sport of any hallucination, and this is no case of an optical phenomenon. This man is evidently some terrible criminal, and I have altogether failed in my duty in not arresting him myself at once, illegally, even at the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... developed, first by Kelvin, and subsequently by Clerk Maxwell. In 1865, two years before Faraday's death, Maxwell proposed the electro-magnetic theory of light, showing that light is an electro-magnetic disturbance. He pointed out that optical as well as electro-magnetic phenomena required a medium for their propagation, and that the properties of this medium appeared to be the same for both. Moreover, the rate at which light travels is known by actual measurement; the rate at which electro-magnetic waves are propagated can be calculated ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... way in a condition of astonishment that engendered, almost, a doubt of my eyes; for if my sight was unimpaired and myself not subject to optical or mental delusion, neither boy nor dog nor bird nor cat, nor any other object of this visible world, had entered that opened door. Was my "finest" house, then, a place of call for wandering ghosts, who came home to roost at four in ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... the effect of the MIRAGE," said the doctor, "and nothing else—a simple optical phenomenon due to the unequal refraction of light by different layers of the atmosphere, ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... Direct Optical Projection of Electro-dynamic Lines of Force, and other Electro-dynamic Phenomena.—By Prof. J.W. MOORE—Second portion of this profusely illustrated paper, giving a great variety of experiments on the phenomena of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... star-gazer, and under most favourable circumstances; their minuteness, their extra-zodiacal position, and the outrageous orbits which they describe, all conspire to keep them out of human ken until they are detected by the telescope, and ascertained to be planets either by their optical appearances, or by a course of watching and comparison of their positions with catalogues of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... to the horse, has noticed his natural inclination to smell of everything which to him looks new and frightful. This is their strange mode of examining everything. And, when they are frightened at anything, though they look at it sharply, they seem to have no confidence in this optical examination alone, but must touch it with the nose before they are entirely satisfied; and, as soon as this ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... occasionally so do, and that we should sometimes perceive effects for which we could find no cause in the material world—no connection with matter? Yet in the whole range of human experience no such thing is known. Even the phenomena which we call optical illusions arise from certain derangements of the atomic particles of the medium through ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... Royal Medal of the Royal Society for this memoir on Medusae, sharing this supreme distinction of scientific England with men so illustrious as Joule, the discoverer of the relation between force and heat, Stokes, the great investigator of optical physics, and Humboldt, the traveller, all of whom received medals in the same year. In making the presentation to Huxley, the Earl of Rosse, then President ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... immense place is this church, and what an immense host must inhabit this wonderful dwelling! Optical delusion adds still more to the effect. Every proportion changes. The eye is deceived and deceives itself, at the same time, with these sublime lights and deepening shades, all calculated to increase the illusion. The man whom in the street you judged, by his surly look, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... through the body of the work, thus facilitating consultation, it is believed that this book makes a step in advance of its predecessors. The maps show all of the stars visible to the naked eye in the regions of sky represented, and, in addition, some stars that can only be seen with optical aid. The latter have been placed in the maps as guide posts in the telescopic field to assist those who are searching for faint and inconspicuous objects referred to in the text. As the book was not written for those who possess the equipment of an observatory, with ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... Brocken, they despaired of seeing the famous spectre, in search of which they toiled, it being visible only when the sun is a few degrees above the horizon. Haue says, he ascended thirty times without seeing it, till at length he was enabled to witness the effect of this optical delusion. For the best account of it, see the Natural Magic of Sir D. Brewster, [26] who explains the origin of these spectres, and shews how the mind is deluded among an ignorant and easily deceived people, and thus traces the birth of ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... It is all an optical matter, a question of color. The pastel shades deceive him; the louder hues send him to his artillery. God help, I say, the red-haired girl! She goes into action with warning pennants flying. The dullest, blindest man can see her a mile away; ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... actual work without further experiment. I have not been able by any arrangement of reflected light to get power enough to print negatives of the ordinary density, and have only succeeded by causing the light to be equally dispersed over the negative by a lens as used in the optical lantern, but the arrangements required are somewhat different to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... highest of human intellects; and we naturally infer that the eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this inference be presumptuous? Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man? If we must compare the eye to an optical instrument, we ought in imagination to take a thick layer of transparent tissue, with spaces filled with fluid, and with a nerve sensitive to light beneath, and then suppose every part of this layer to be continually ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... whatever remained in my stomach. I sat limp and cold, conscious only of the erratic bobbing of the little vessel and the ceaseless rhythm of the oars. At last, unbelievably, the sky turned from black to gray. I could not believe it anything but an optical illusion in the endless night and I strained to dissipate whatever biliousness was affecting my vision. But it was dawn, sure enough, and soon it revealed the pettish, wallowing Channel and the fragile outline of our boat, even ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... mystery of the arts that were practised upon them. Such was no doubt the case with the speaking heads and statues, which were sometimes exhibited in the ancient oracles. Such was the case with certain optical delusions, which were practised on the unsuspecting, and were contrived to produce on them the effect of supernatural revelations. Such is the story of Bel and the Dragon in the book of Apocrypha, where the priests daily placed before the idol twelve measures of flour, and forty sheep, and ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... was one of the cases in which Dalton, the original investigator of this optical defect, took special interest. At a later date (1859) he sent Yule, through Professor Wilson, skeins of coloured silks to name. Yule's elder brother Robert had the same peculiarity of sight, and it was also present in two earlier and two later generations of their mother's family—making ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... trying to force every atom of vision from my eyes. For a long time I thought they must every moment disappear and resolve themselves into the movements of the branches and prove to be an optical illusion. I searched everywhere for a proof of reality, when all the while I understood quite well that the standard of reality had changed. For the longer I looked the more certain I became that these figures were real ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... and irregularities of form being, as it were, extinguished by the distance, and only the general figure of the condensed parts being discernible. It is under the appearance of objects of this character that all the greater globular clusters exhibit themselves in telescopes of insufficient optical power to show ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... justly famed and to which they often treat us even when they are not in the presence of works of art, had not the professor followed up his clue with the utmost gravity, assuring me at last that no picture in the gallery was beyond the reach of optical diagnostic. Still suspicious of his good faith, I suggested, tentatively, that perhaps the discrepancies between the normal man's vision and the pictures on the wall were the result of intentional distortion on the part of the artists. At this the professor became passionately serious—"Do you mean ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... the Articulata, we may start from an optic nerve simply coated with pigment, the latter sometimes forming a sort of pupil, but destitute of lens or other optical contrivance. With insects it is now known that the numerous facets on the cornea of their great compound eyes form true lenses, and that the cones include curiously modified nervous filaments. But these organs ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... a private landing, small, but so remarkable that I thought for an instant the whole thing must be an optical illusion. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... maker of beads for rosaries. Then there were the margaritai, who made small beads; and the fuppialume, who made large blown beads. Each man was a skilled artist, you see, and did some one special thing. The phiolari made vases, cups, and glass for windows; the cristallai optical glass; and the specchiai mirrors. No strangers were allowed to visit the glass works, and all apprentices must pass a rigid examination not only as to their skill, but as to their previous personal history. In 1495 the glass houses at Murano extended for a mile along a single ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... did I?" says I. "Well, listen here, Sykesy! Next time I has an optical illusion of you paradin' out in any of my uniform, there'll be doin's ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... has been said, blindly into vacancy. It may have been an optical illusion, it may have been a mere vagary born of an over-wrought brain; but a picture formed before him. In the distance, toward the west, he saw something that looked like a great arch of stone, a natural bridge, rugged with crags and dark with pine. ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... and intellectual unfolding. It was not till after Alexander's conquests in the East, the extension of the Roman Empire, the invention of the mariner's compass, the discovery of America, and the circumnavigation of the globe, together with the perfection of optical instruments by the use of which the true character of the celestial bodies was demonstrated, that the cosmical idea became truly a scientific one. (Humboldt.) Thus were the partial and fragmentary notions of early peoples at length corrected, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... realized I was approaching Biddy Maloney's cottage until I saw her coming out of it and I certainly hadn't thought of Biddy Maloney until my eye fell upon her. And it's a funny optical illusion that deceives one into seeing an old lady opening gates, crossing railways and limping ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... hold apart more than one thousand stimulations per second, that there is, in fact, no such thing as fusion, is a supposition which is in such striking contrast to all previous explanations of optical phenomena, that it should be accepted only if no other theory can do justice to them. It is hoped that the following pages will show that the facts do not demand such ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... eye creates the objects which it perceives. The death-blow to such superstition is only struck when we have not only proved that men have been deceived, but shown besides how they came to be deceived; when science has explained the optical delusion, and shown the physiological state in which such apparitions become visible. Ridicule will not do it. Disproof will not do it. So long as men feel that there is a spirit-world, and so long ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... results at which experienced chemists have arrived in their analysis of the same mineral. For the reader will often find that crystals of a mineral determined to be the same by physical characters, crystalline form, and optical properties, have been declared by skilful analysers to be composed of distinct elements. This disagreement seemed at first subversive of the atomic theory, or the doctrine that there is a fixed and constant relation between the crystalline form and structure ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... III. An Optical Illusion.—In the sphere of vision many very interesting facts are constantly coming to light. Sight is the most complex of the senses, the most easily deranged, and, withal, the most necessary to our normal existence. The report of the following ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... to obliterate. The psychological illusion that our ideas and purposes are original facts and forces (instead of expressions in consciousness of facts and forces which are material) and the practical and optical illusion that everything wheels about us in this world—these are the primitive persuasions which the enemies of naturalism have always been ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... once white, have been blackened by every species of exhalation. Such is, in all its simple modesty, the aspect of a temple consecrated to the worship of Bacchus and Terpsichore. At first, by a very natural optical illusion, we are struck by the confined space before us, but the eye, after a time, piercing through the thick atmosphere of a thousand vapours which are most inodorous, the extent becomes visible by details which escape in the first chaotic glimpse. It is the moment of creation, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... series of ladders, each from twenty to thirty feet long,—but with regard to those near the top, Karl had great doubts. The shelves did not seem more distant from each other than those below, but their horizontal breadth appeared less. This might possibly be an optical delusion, caused by the greater distance from which they were viewed; but if so, it would not much mend the matter for the design which Karl had in view—since the deception that would have given him an advantage in the breadth would have been against him in ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... shadows appeared to move like phantoms. Like a picture from the ghost world, it flickered for a few minutes like heat lightning, then disappeared, leaving the night as dark as before. It was a night mirage, and something more than an optical illusion. It was a rare thing on the plain. The Kid knew that it meant something. That glow was the reflection in the sky of a camp fire! Those shadows were men! The ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... degree in other temples, the seemingly straight lines of the building were all slightly curved, and the vertical faces inclined. This was done to correct the monotony and stiffness of absolutely straight lines and right angles, and certain optical illusions which their acute observation had detected. The long horizontal lines of the stylobate and cornice were made convex upward; asimilar convexity in the horizontal corona of the pediment counteracted the seeming concavity otherwise resulting from its meeting with the ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... Spherical vapor and atmospheric space give but a faint idea of its range. We find it a leading science in Physics, and having intimate relations with heat, light, electricity, magnetism, winds, water, vegetation, geological changes, optical effects, pneumatics, geography,—and with climate, controlling the pursuits and affecting the character of the human race. It is so intimately blended, indeed, with the other matters here named, as scarcely to have any positive ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... universities, and won the degrees of Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy. Besides acquiring a knowledge of seven languages he gained a brilliant reputation for proficiency in the branch of optical surgery. For a time he was the leading assistant in the office of a world-renowned specialist ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... scientific and the artistic efforts of the new and the old world, we may tell the history of the moving pictures by the following dates and achievements. In the year 1825 a Doctor Roget described in the "Philosophical Transactions" an interesting optical illusion of movement, resulting, for instance, when a wheel is moving along behind a fence of upright bars. The discussion was carried much further when it was taken up a few years later by a master ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... observations. They are stupendous, they are wonderful, but whether they are true or false I cannot tell." He concludes, "I will never concede his four new planets to that Italian from Padua, though I die for it." So he published a pamphlet asserting that reflected rays and optical illusions were the sole cause of the appearance, and that the only use of the imaginary planets was to gratify Galileo's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... was so extensively employed by the Pueblo Indians for the manufacture of various utensils, has proved to be composed largely of quartz, intermingled with which is a fine, fibrous, radiated substance, the optical properties of which demonstrate it to be fibrolite. In addition, the rock is filled with minute crystals of octahedral form which are composed of magnetite, and scattered through the rock are minute yellow crystals of rutile. The red coloration which these specimens ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... equidistant between yellow-green and blue-violet, so if for red and blue-green; red, yellow-green and blue-violet be substituted the combination loses its obviousness and a certain harshness without losing anything of its brilliance, or without departing from the optical law involved. Such a combination corresponds to a diminished triad ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... had sought seclusion before. By this time he had ceased to devote himself to pure mathematics, and in company with his friends Mersenne and Mydorge was deeply interested in the theory of the refraction of light, and in the practical work of grinding glasses of the best shape suitable for optical instruments. But all the while he was engaged with reflections on the nature of man, of the soul and of God, and for a while he remained invisible even to his most familiar friends. But their importunity made a hermitage in Paris impossible; a graceless friend even ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... crisp mornings a striking optical effect may frequently be observed from the shadows of the higher mountains while the sunbeams are pouring past overhead. Then every insect, no matter what may be its own proper color, burns white in the light. Gauzy-winged ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... dessert that would have frightened a strong man after such a dinner as had preceded it. Not so the Ruggleses—for a strong man is nothing to a small boy—and they kindled to the dessert as if the turkey had been a dream and the six vegetables an optical delusion. There was plum-pudding, mince-pie, and ice-cream, and there were nuts, and raisins, and oranges. Kitty chose ice-cream, explaining that she knew it "by sight," but hadn't never tasted none; but all the rest took the entire variety, ...
— The Birds' Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... variety in the size will indicate a corresponding difference in the distance, and will measure that difference. Nor could we imagine any exception to these inferences from A or from B, whichever of the two were assumed, unless through optical laws that might not equally affect objects under different circumstances; I mean, for instance, that might suffer a disturbance as applied under hypoth. B, to different depths in space, or under hypoth. A, to different arrangements of structure in the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... definite ability to do this, and each differs from every other in the amount of bending which it can bring about under given conditions. The accurate determination of the amount of bending in a given case requires very finely constructed optical instruments and also a knowledge of how to apply a certain amount of mathematics. However, all this part of the work has already been done by competent scientists, and tables have been prepared by them, in which the values for each material ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... a flutter, and all was over. The great conjurer had at last performed an illusion that was not optical—an act not mentioned on ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... almost as he was taken to see the King driving out of Buckingham Palace. Hence the first effect of the enlargement of the armies was something almost like a fairy-tale—almost as if the streets were crowded with kings, walking about and wearing crowns of gold. This merely optical vision of the revolution was but the first impression of a reality equally vast and new. The first levies which came to be called popularly Kitchener's Army, because of the energy and inspiration with ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... and helplessly shook his head in a horizontal direction. It was wonderful how Mrs. Crowl towered over Mr. Crowl, even when he stood up in his shoes. She measured half an inch less. It was quite an optical illusion. ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... there was nothing the matter with the brain. It was only my eyes that had been deceived; they had had a vision, one of those visions which lead simple folk to believe in miracles. It was a nervous seizure of the optical apparatus, nothing more; the eyes were ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... accustomed to the use of a microscope. The eye-piece of a microscope (fig. 44a, A) unscrews at a, showing a diaphragm at b, which will serve as a support for an eye-piece micrometer. This last, B, is a scale engraved on glass, and may be purchased of any optical instrument maker, though it may be necessary to send the eye-piece to have it properly fitted. When resting on the diaphragm it is in focus for the upper lens, so that on looking through the microscope, the scale is clearly seen in whatever position ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... impression, showing that they did not receive the message through the cord and spinal nerves. He then divided the sympathetic nerves, and the chromatophores lost at once the power of contraction; he thus demonstrated that the sympathetic nerves were the transmitters of the optical ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... colour'd Glass to screen my eye with; But that which I desire may be taken notice of, because we may elsewhere have occasion to reflect upon it, and because it seems not agreeable to what Anatomists and Optical Writers deliver, touching the relation of the two eyes to each other, is this circumstance, that though my Right eye, with which I looked thorow the Telescope, were thus affected by the over-strong impression of the light, yet when the flame of a Candle, or some other bright object appear'd ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... them, there are ever some, to cheer our transitory existence here. There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast. Some men, like bats or owls, have better eyes for the darkness than for the light. We, who have no such optical powers, are better pleased to take our last parting look at the visionary companions of many solitary hours, when the brief sunshine of the world is ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... ACHROMATIC. An optical term applied to those telescopes in which aberration of the rays of light, and the colours dependent thereon, are ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Swedenborg used to wear; not the smaller pair—those he gave to Hans Christian Andersen—but the large pair, and these seem to have got mislaid. I think they are Spinoza's make. You know, he was an optical-glass maker by profession, and the best we ever had. See if you can get them ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... the shift of an inch in the position of a telescope. It was her telescope in fact that had gained in range—just as her danger lay in her exposing herself to the observation by the more charmed, and therefore the more reckless, use of this optical resource. Not under any provocation to produce it in public was her unremitted rule; but the difficulties of duplicity had not shrunk, while the need of it had doubled. Humbugging, which she had so practised with her father, had been a comparatively ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... tales as these they lured on the Pole from day to day; and at last persuaded him to be a witness of their mysteries. Whether they played off any optical delusions upon him; or whether, by the force of a strong imagination, he deluded himself, does not appear; but certain it is, that he became a complete tool in their hands, and consented to do whatever they wished him. Kelly, at these interviews, placed himself at a certain distance from the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... rested doubtless on the bottom of the ocean. Every fantastic form was there; there seemed in the distance cities and palaces as white as chalk; pillars and reversed cones, pyramids and mounds of every shape, valleys and lakes; and under the influence of the optical delusions of the locality, green fields and meadows, and tossing seas. Here the whole party rested soundly, and pushed on hard the next day ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... to by phantasmagorists is further increased by the mystery that conceals, from the eyes of the public, their operations and optical instruments: but it is easy for the showman to snatch from them this superiority, and to strengthen the illusion for the children whom you choose to amuse with this sight. For that purpose, he has only to change the arrangement of the sheet, by requiring it to be suspended from the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... been passing a few weeks in Paris, and the papers dwell upon the marvellous preservation of his powers, which seem to baffle the attacks of time. Galignani says he "read at the Academy of Sciences, before a most crowded auditory, a paper on the optical and mathematical inquiries which have occupied his time during his late residence at Cannes. His lordship accompanied the reading of this memoir with numerous demonstrations on the board, and for upwards of an hour captivated the attention of his hearers. MM. Arago, Biot, Tenard, and other ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... were mathematical, optical, cosmographical, and astronomical,—but chiefly astronomical. Two or three of his principal works are the "Cosmographic Mystery," (Mysterium Cosmographicum,) the "New Astronomy," (Astronomia Nova, seu Physica Caelestis,) ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... yet living at Killarney, who solemnly declare that they have seen the chieftain on his May-morning ride. But these, if honest persons, have doubtless been deceived by singular appearances in the atmosphere, called optical illusions, or mirages. ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... threaded its way among the blocks of ice which were carried along in the current of the Angara. A moving panorama was displayed on both sides of the river, and, by an optical illusion, it appeared as if it was the raft which was motionless before a succession of picturesque scenes. Here were high granite cliffs, there wild gorges, down which rushed a torrent; sometimes appeared a clearing with a still smoking village, then thick pine forests blazing. ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... has observed the hereditary tendency in this direction to be heightened, and some of the children to be myopic at an earlier age or in a higher degree than their parents. Thirdly, squinting is a familiar example of hereditary transmission: it is frequently a result of such optical defects as have been above mentioned; but the more primary and uncomplicated forms of it are also sometimes in a marked degree transmitted in a family. Fourthly, CATARACT, or opacity of the crystalline ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... his ways. One is always reminded that he is a barbarian, that he is ignorant, that he is dirty. He is possibly a barbarian in one way, that he can differentiate good from bad, real comfort from "optical illusions" or illusions of any other kind, a thing highly civilised people seem generally unable to do. This is particularly noticeable in Russian railway travelling,—probably the best and cheapest in ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... complacent control of these overall complexities that must be met with automatic accuracy was the Starrett Analogue/Digital Computer, Optical Wave type 44-63, irreverently referred to by the acronymically-minded as Sad Cow, though more frequently as the Sacred Cow, or ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... seen, just under his nose, a very long pair of soles inserted in the apertures—that sight had only confused and bewildered him, unaccompanied as it ought to have been with the trunk and face of Lenny Fairfield. Those soles seemed to him optical delusions, phantoms of the overheated brain; but now, catching hold of Stirn, while the Parson in equal astonishment caught hold of him—the Squire faltered out, "Well, this beats cock-fighting! The man's as mad as a March hare, and has taken ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... model of those formal but reverend manners which make what is called a gentleman of the old school, so called under an impression that the style is passing away, but which, I suppose, is an optical illusion, as there are always a few more of the class remaining, and always a few young men to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... "Optical density! The whole subject is a network of riddles—a network with solutions glimmering elusively through. And being but two-and-twenty and full of enthusiasm, I said, 'I will devote my life to this. This is worth while.' You know what fools ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... machinery, connectors for audio and video, parts for motor vehicles, dental products, hardware, prepared foodstuffs, electronic equipment, optical products ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... glassware, since it resists the action of reagents better than the softer sodium glass. If lead oxide is substituted for the whole or a part of the lime, the glass is very soft, but has a high index of refraction and is valuable for making optical instruments and artificial jewels. ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... is an optical deception, depending upon principles which I cannot well explain to you till you know more of that branch of science. But what a number of new ideas this afternoon's walk has afforded you! I do not wonder that you found it ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... would all round were tree-ferns and palms with long drooping creepers, and a blaze of brilliant orchids. Smoking-room, house, England, all were gone, and he sat on a settee in the heart of a virgin forest of the Amazon. It was no mere optical delusion or trick. He could see the hot steam rising from the tropical undergrowth, the heavy drops falling from the huge green leaves, the very grain and fibre of the rough bark which clothed the trunks. Even as he gazed a green mottled snake curled noiselessly over a branch above his head, ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... common, on, As a more rare and rich phenomenon. He wisely said that the sensorium Is for the eyes a great emporium, To which these noted picture-stealers Send all they can and meet with dealers. In many an optical proceeding The brain, he said, showed great good breeding; For instance, when we ogle women (A trick which Barbara tutored him in), Although the dears are apt to get in a Strange position on the retina, Yet ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... paternal and maternal grandparents emigrated from Scotland together and are said to have landed the day before the Battle of Bunker Hill. The McAllisters of Philadelphia (father and son) were famous as makers of optical and mathematical instruments, and the son was the first to study and fit astigmatic lenses, and was also the introducer of the system of numbering buildings according to the numbers of the streets, ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... Miriam stood between him and the bushes. He saw her distinctly for a moment, and then she vanished from his gaze. He pursued her in the direction she had taken, but no trace of her could he find. Then, recollecting how very ill she was, he became convinced that he had become subject to an optical illusion. But he had now become fearful and nervous, and dared not return to the spot to renew the search. And thus it was that the ring was left upon the twig of alder to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... which the material is utilised in the best conditions of resistance. For a standard with ends has been substituted a standard with marks, which permits much more precise definition and can be employed in optical processes of observation alone; that is, in processes which can produce in it no deformation and no alteration. Moreover, the marks are traced on the plane of the neutral fibres[2] exposed, and the invariability of ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... time to reach the point of observation, and we all waited below, how impatiently may be imagined. What if the look-out were mistaken, if some optical delusion?—But West, at all events, would ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... if you like to call it so; say, rather, a dream in the instant before unconsciousness. Such a babe as this knows no distinction between dreams and realities—between the momentarily disordered mental vision and the ordinary objects of optical seeing." ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... "It was an optical illusion!" While the other contended that, "It was an acoustical illusion!" And so they disputed. Something, however, was, it will be seen, common to both "It was ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... of which furnishes an excellent quality. It is highly prized by mineralogists on account of its double refractive qualities. If a piece of this mineral be placed over a word, the letters forming it will appear double. Iceland spar is used chiefly in the optical instrument known ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... operate, may be removed from the carriage and placed on the ground at a distance of about a hundred yards from the machine, and be connected therewith by a conductor. Col. Mangin's projector consists of a glass mirror with double curvature, silvered upon its convex face. It possesses so remarkable optical properties that it has been adopted by nearly all powers. The fascicle of light that it emits has a perfect concentration. In front of the projector there are two doors. The first of these, which is plane ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... upon the uppers. Where the instep is defective or totally absent, a pretence at one may be made by blacking that portion of the sole of the foot that is immediately adjacent to the heel. This causes a kind of optical illusion which is ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... I scanned using Optical Character Recognition was printed in the 1888-92 period by John W. Lovell of 150 Worth St. New York. Lovell has been described as a book pirate who tried to form a monopoly in the cheap uncopyrighted book trade. The US copyright laws were rather weak in the nineteenth ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... thinking that I was the victim of some hallucination, or that the refraction from the intense light produced an optical delusion; and, as I did so, the flaming pillar slowly twisted and thundered off whithersoever it passes to in the bowels of the great earth, leaving Ayesha standing ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... left eye, so swollen now that it was closed to a mere slit. There was no optical delusion about its nomenclature and in diameter and chromatic depth it was at the head of its class; in fact, it gave promise of being by daylight in a class by itself. It was the sort of decoration which could be relied upon implicitly to fire the imagination of misguided acquaintances ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... hypothesis is exposed to some special objections. It requires no small strength of nerve steadily to conceive not only of the variation, but of the formation of the organs of an animal through cumulative variation and natural selection. Think of such an organ as the eye, that most perfect of optical instruments, as so produced in the lower animals and perfected in the higher! A friend of ours, who accepts the new doctrine, confesses that for a long while a cold chill came over him whenever he thought of the eye. He has at length got over that stage ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... ocean appears either flat or slightly concave, and aeronauts declare that this apparent concavity becomes more marked, the higher they ascend. It is only at those rare periods when the air is so miraculously clear as to produce the effect of no air—rendering impossible the slightest optical illusion—that our eyes can see things as they really are. So pure was the atmosphere to-day, that, at meridian, the moon, although a thin sickle, three days distant from the sun, shone ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... Moscow before seeing it, may be worthy of repetition. The general colors of the buildings, roofs, and churches are light, gay, and sparkling, so that the whole, taken in one sweep of the eye, presents an exceedingly brilliant appearance, more like some well-contrived and highly-wrought optical illusions in a theatre—such, for example, as the fairy scenery of the "Prophete"—than any thing I can now remember. The vast extent of the city, compared with its population (the circuit of its outer wall being ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... farther and more essential ground of difference in system of shadow between the Flemish and Italian colorists. It is a well-known optical fact that the color of shadow is complemental to that of light: and that therefore, in general terms, warm light has cool shadow, and cool light hot shadow. The noblest masters of the northern and southern schools respectively adopted these contrary keys; and while the Flemings raised their ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... them, do you? I suspected them at once. Still I pretended to turn Martha's whole story into a joke, and tried to explain to her how the darkness made us liable to have all kinds of optical illusions; so that when I left, and a servant was sent with a candle to light me on my way, the countess was quite sure that I had no suspicion. I had none; but I had more than that. As soon as I entered the garden, therefore, ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... her trunk going was surpassed only by the astonishment of the neighbors, who all but broke the glass in their various windows as they pressed against it to convince themselves that the sight was not an optical illusion. ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... but the blue sky above, and the deep blue water below. Hence it was termed by the geographers of old, Aprositus, or the Inaccessible; while modern navigators have called its very existence in question, pronouncing it a mere optical illusion, like the Fata Morgana of the Straits of Messina; or classing it with those unsubstantial regions known to mariners as Cape Flyaway, and the ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... him the first thing to-morrow; and unless he is an optical illusion—which I vow I half believe is the case—I will come at the truth in spite of your demoniac friend, ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... afford. There are a great many excellent makes of lenses on the market and even the stock types that are supplied with moderate-priced cameras are of very good quality. The two distinct types of lenses are the "rapid rectilinear" and the "anastigmatic," which names refer to their optical properties in distributing the light. For our purpose all we need to know is that the higher price we pay the better our lenses will be, and in addition to this the further fact that the best kind of results can be obtained by any lens provided that we do not try to force it to do work for ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... true that, to a traveller approaching the Himalayas from any part of the great plain of India, these mountains present the appearance of a single range, stretching continuously along the horizon from east to west. This, however, is a mere optical illusion; and, instead of one range, the Himalayas may be regarded as a congeries of mountain ridges, covering a superficies of 200,000 square miles, and running in as many different directions as there are ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... already mentioned, is that they are meteorological or similar type balloons. This, however, does not explain reports that they travel at high speed or maneuver rapidly. But 'Saucer' men point out that the movement could be explained away as an optical illusion or actual acceleration of the balloon caused by a gas leak and later exaggerated by observers. . . . There are scores of possible explanations for the scores of different type ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... I could not imagine why she gazed about her with such obtrusive caution. She inspected the occupants of the various chairs around with deliberate scrutiny through a long-handled tortoise-shell optical abomination. None of them seemed to satisfy her. After a minute's effort, during which she also muttered a few words very low to her husband, she selected an empty spot midway between our group and the most distant group on the other side of us. In other words, she sat as far away from everybody ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... to Alice Faraday: and, now that he had drawn her away from the throng to this secluded nook and was about to put his fortune to the test, a horrible fear swept over him that he had overdone it. He was having optical illusions. ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... faded and was replaced by a gaze of mute astonishment as he observed that he had depicted Waller's right eye upon his chin, close beneath his nose! There seemed to be some sort of magic here, and he felt disposed to regard the thing in the light of some serious optical illusion, when, on closer inspection, he discovered Waller's mouth drawn altogether beyond the circle of his countenance, a foot or so above his head, on the stem of the tree against which he leaned. This changed the current ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... in making chemical glassware, since it resists the action of reagents better than the softer sodium glass. If lead oxide is substituted for the whole or a part of the lime, the glass is very soft, but has a high index of refraction and is valuable for making optical instruments and artificial jewels. ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... "That's an optical illusion. There are three parties, but each is dominated by the fifty families, and election laws are such that for all practical purposes it's impossible to start another party. Theoretically it's possible, actually it isn't. The ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... deadly wind before which all life goes down like a straw, that raged here in the winter. On every side, as far as the eyes could reach, wide white plains of undulating ice and snow, broken here and there by patches of barren rock, that seemed now by some optical delusion, against the glaring white, to be of the brightest mauve and violet tints. Only that; ice and snow and rock for mile upon mile, until the tale of three hundred and fifty is told. No track or trace of bird, no sweet companionship of little furred, four-footed things, no blade ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... member of a committee, to which Sir John Herschel and Mr. Dollond also belonged, appointed by the Royal Society to examine, and if possible improve, the manufacture of glass for optical purposes. Their experiments continued till 1829, when the account of them constituted the subject of a 'Bakerian Lecture.' This lectureship, founded in 1774 by Henry Baker, Esq., of the Strand, London, provides ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... brows. First a slim yellow circle, like the nimbus round the moon, took shape and grew sharp against the darkness; then this faded gradually, and there was the Face, wearing the same sad, sweet look it wore when he waved his hand to us across the awful water. This optical illusion kept ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... that I could be in either place by a sort of mental shift, something like staring at one of the geometrical optical illusions you can find in any psychology textbook in the chapter on illusions, and seeing ...
— The Gallery • Roger Phillips Graham
... a country place. I remember sending him a report of some rather remarkable manifestations of light witnessed at a private seance in London, under fairly good test-conditions. Dr. Tyndall was at the time engaged in some special optical investigations, and I asked him to spend five minutes in reading the notes enclosed. Dr. Tyndall's reply, in his laconic, jocular style, was to this effect—"I have spent five minutes as you desired, and it is a long time since I spent five minutes ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... spying, shrewish, unfriendly kind of fellow at his Court, applied to England in not many months hence, and got Williams sent away: ["22d January, 1751" (MS. LIST in State-Paper Office).] on to Russia, or I forget whither;—which did not mend the Hanbury optical-machinery on that side. The dull, tobacco-smoking Saxon-Polish Majesty, about whom he idly retails so many scandals, had never done ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... many yet living at Killarney, who solemnly declare that they have seen the chieftain on his May-morning ride. But these, if honest persons, have doubtless been deceived by singular appearances in the atmosphere, called optical illusions, or mirages. ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... scenery; an optical device which gave a distortion to the picture unless seen from a particular point; a relief, modelled to produce ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... matters that now bulk very large in the minds of men; a small theater, equal to none but very modest demands; a few engravings and plaster-casts and paintings—many of them very poor—to serve as a basis for theories of art; a little optical apparatus, a few minerals and plants and bones, to aid in the advancement of science; everything material on a small scale,—this was Weimar a hundred years ago. Truly a restricted outlook upon this spacious world as it ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... take example from the young artist, who aspires to visit the great Masters in Florence and in Rome. Till we have discovered some intellectual daguerreotype, which takes off the course of thought, and the form, lineaments, and features of truth, as completely and minutely, as the optical instrument reproduces the sensible object; we must come to the teachers of wisdom to learn wisdom, we must repair to the fountain, and drink there. Portions of it may go from thence to the ends of the earth by means of books; but the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... are programmed to reverse acceleration if they haven't made a target within a given time. This one should be back in less than six hours. If it first detects our ship, everything is all right. It has optical recognition circuits that identify any North American warcraft by type, disarm the war head, and steer it home. But, if it first comes within fifty kilometers of some other mass—like this asteroid or one of the companion rocks—it will detonate. We'll make every effort to intercept, but space ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... childish sobs, and the remembrance of that horror filled me with self-pity. Then, as the roots of my hair began to stir, my feet set themselves instinctively for flight. This instinct, however, I promptly and sternly repressed. I knew all about these optical illusions, and tried to congratulate myself on this opportunity for investigating one so interesting and vivid. At the same time I gave a hasty side-thought to what would have happened had I been one of the superstitious farmhands or fishermen of the district. I should have taken ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... so swollen now that it was closed to a mere slit. There was no optical delusion about its nomenclature and in diameter and chromatic depth it was at the head of its class; in fact, it gave promise of being by daylight in a class by itself. It was the sort of decoration which could be ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... hand—so placed between the light and the deed as to obscure the spot on which he was engaged. The unaccountable hand, however, was gone almost as soon as noticed." The clerk concluding that this was some optical delusion, proceeded with his work, and had come to the clause wherein the Master of Draycot disinherited his son, when again the same ghostly hand was thrust between ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... a curious optical effect, the spectators always see themselves in the personages who are good, tender, generous, heroic whom we place on the boards; and in the personages who are vicious or ridiculous they never see anyone but their neighbors. How can you expect then that ...
— How to Write a Play - Letters from Augier, Banville, Dennery, Dumas, Gondinet, - Labiche, Legouve, Pailleron, Sardou, Zola • Various
... among its profounder lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their momentary footsteps on beams of light. Though she had some indistinct idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed sway over the spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to look forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were answered, the procession of external existence flitted ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to induce the poor viscount to listen to reason. I made him touch the mirrors and the iron tree and the branches and explained to him, by optical laws, all the luminous imagery by which we were surrounded and of which we need not allow ourselves to be the victims, like ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... recognized law of optics to the astronomical theory, showing the true orbits of the heavenly bodies to be perfectly circular, and their orbital motions to be perfectly uniform." all irregularities being, I suppose, optical delusions. Mr. Von Gumpach is a learned man; what else, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... his head in his hands. He refused to see more. Whether ghost or optical illusion, an emanation from another world, or an image born of his remorse and proceeding from himself, it should torture his eyes ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... usually a Person to be convinced by Reason of the Thing, nor so easily rebuked, as to amend by Admonitions. I thought therefore fit to acquaint you with a convenient Mechanical Way, which may easily prevent or correct Staring, by an Optical Contrivance of new Perspective-Glasses, short and commodious like Opera Glasses, fit for short-sighted People as well as others, these Glasses making the Objects appear, either as they are seen by the naked Eye, or more distinct, though somewhat less than ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the work of chance? that no artificer had wrought here? that there was no purpose in this, no design, no guiding intelligence? The thing was incredible. In vain did Helmholtz declare that 'the eye has every possible defect that can be found in an optical instrument, and even some peculiar to itself,' and that 'if an optician tried to sell me an instrument which had all these defects I should think myself quite justified in blaming his carelessness in the strongest terms, and sending him back his instrument.' To ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... Brewster have described "Philosophical Transactions" 1836 page 65 a singular "artificial substance, resembling shell." It is deposited in fine, transparent, highly polished, brown- coloured laminae, possessing peculiar optical properties, on the inside of a vessel, in which cloth, first prepared with glue and then with lime, is made to revolve rapidly in water. It is much softer, more transparent, and contains more animal matter, than the natural incrustation at Ascension; but we here ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... strides, in a line parallel to their own course, the opposite ridge of a mountain, when divided from it by a narrow glen; and indeed the fact of the apparition is so generally admitted, that modern scepticism has only found refuge by ascribing it to optical deception. * ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... It is an optical deception, depending upon principles which I cannot well explain to you till you know more of that branch of science. But what a number of new ideas this afternoon's walk has afforded you! I do not wonder that you found it amusing; it has been very instructive, too. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... "The observer is the periscope itself. Any of the various fluorescing substances placed in the focus of the object-glass, or at the optical image in front of the eyepiece, will show the picture in the color peculiar to the fluorescing material. ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... true in the end with looking which is analogous to touching. The manner in which the libidinous excitement is frequently awakened is by the optical impression, and selection takes account of this circumstance—if this teleological mode of thinking be permitted—by making the sexual object a thing of beauty. The covering of the body, which keeps abreast with civilization, serves to arouse sexual inquisitiveness, which ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... probably gone by, as the day for the evolution of annulose segments and vertebrate skeletons has gone by,—on our planet, at least. In the line of our own development, all work of this kind stopped long ago, to be replaced by different methods. As an optical instrument, the eye had well-nigh reached extreme perfection in many a bird and mammal ages before man's beginnings; and the essential features of the human hand existed already in the hands of Miocene apes. But different ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... is mixed with bromide of silver emulsion, which is entirely free from nitrate of silver, no eosine silver can form; it acts, therefore, only as an optical sensitizer. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... them, Geordie, and though they are better than the others, I am not satisfied with these optical delusions, as I call them. Now, I put it to you, boys, is it natural for lads from fifteen to eighteen to command ships, defeat pirates, outwit smugglers, and so cover themselves with glory, that Admiral Farragut invites them to dinner, saying, 'Noble boy, you are an honour to your country!' Or, ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... colour-blindness was one of the cases in which Dalton, the original investigator of this optical defect, took special interest. At a later date (1859) he sent Yule, through Professor Wilson, skeins of coloured silks to name. Yule's elder brother Robert had the same peculiarity of sight, and it was also present in two earlier ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... our attention. It presents the most perfect optical illusion imaginable; in looking up to the ceiling, which is here very high, you seem to see the very firmament itself, studded with stars; and afar off, a comet with its long, bright tail. Not far from this Star Chamber, may be seen, in a cavity in the wall on the right, and about twenty feet above ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... to its adjustments the eye does not differ in principle from various other optical instruments, such as the microscope, telescope, photographer's camera, etc., which, in their use, form images of objects. These all require some adjustment of their parts, called focusing, which adapts them to the distance. The eye's method of focusing, however, differs from that of most optical ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... shelter of a corpse, should avoid the light is only natural; the strange part is its very perception. The maggot is blind. Its pointed fore part, which we hesitate to call a head, bears absolutely no trace of any optical apparatus; and the same with every other part of the body. There is nothing but one bare, smooth, white skin. And this sightless creature, deprived of any special nervous points served by ocular power, is extremely sensitive to the light. Its whole skin is ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... you at all. I have too much respect for you, and if I should happen to break my leg I don't know that there is another that I should prefer to yourself to treat me as a patient, but you have not discovered an optical instrument yet to tell what is going on ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... good as to listen. You know that optical instruments have acquired great perfection; with certain instruments we have succeeded in obtaining enlargements of 6,000 times and reducing the moon to within forty miles' distance. Now, at this distance, any objects sixty feet square would ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... in the vicinity of a convoy either by showing too much of her periscope or by a misdirected torpedo, the guard-ships on the flank attacked immediately dropped their smoke buoys as they continued moving at full speed. By this means an impenetrable optical barrier was interposed between the attacking submarine and the fleet of merchantmen under convoy. When thus shielded from attack—a submarine values her small stock of torpedoes (six to ten) too highly to risk the loss of one or more on something she cannot even ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... point; atom &c (small quantity) 32; fragment &c (small part) 51; powder &c 330; point of a pin, mathematical point; minutiae &c (unimportance) 643. micrometer; vernier; scale. microphotography, photomicrography, micrography^; photomicrograph, microphotograph; microscopy; microscope (optical instruments) 445. V. be little &c adj.; lie in a nutshell; become small &c (decrease) 36, (contract) 195. Adj. little; small &c (in quantity) 32; minute, diminutive, microscopic; microzoal; inconsiderable &c (unimportant) 643; exiguous, puny, tiny, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... The country, as a whole, must be educated up to the notion that sooner or later it is sure to be universally adopted, that it is only a question of time when this will be done. Already electrical, chemical and optical manufacturing concerns use the metric units and system exclusively. The system is also used widely in medicine and still other arts. Then all institutions of learning use the metric system exclusively whenever this is possible. ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... I suspected them at once. Still I pretended to turn Martha's whole story into a joke, and tried to explain to her how the darkness made us liable to have all kinds of optical illusions; so that when I left, and a servant was sent with a candle to light me on my way, the countess was quite sure that I had no suspicion. I had none; but I had more than that. As soon as I entered the garden, ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... Let no one say that matter must obstruct or dim the senses of the soul; that a body must act as a veil to the spirit, and shut out much knowledge. It is not so here. Matter helps us in the acquisition of knowledge, as, for example, glass in optical instruments. The telescope, with its lenses, gives the eye vast compass; the microscope gives it a power, equally wonderful, of minute vision. True, in these cases it is matter helping matter—glass assisting the eye; the analogy is ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... long,—but with regard to those near the top, Karl had great doubts. The shelves did not seem more distant from each other than those below, but their horizontal breadth appeared less. This might possibly be an optical delusion, caused by the greater distance from which they were viewed; but if so, it would not much mend the matter for the design which Karl had in view—since the deception that would have given him an advantage in the breadth would have been against ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... was nothing to me now, no more than if it had been some passing dream of summer sun-light and flowers; no more than if some optical illusion had dazzled my eyes and gladdened my heart for a short moment, and left me as suddenly again, with my tame and ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... did Mill see woman and all her works through an optical medium which gave images like this; but there was upon his retina a large blind area. By reason of this last it was inapprehensible to him that there could be an objection to the sexes co-operating indiscriminately in work. It was beyond his ken that the sex element would under these ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... second? or that there exist animated and regularly organised beings, many thousands of whose bodies laid close together would not extend an inch? But what are these to the astonishing truths which modern optical inquiries have disclosed, which teach us that every point of a medium through which a ray of light passes is affected with a succession of periodical movements, regularly recurring at equal intervals, no less than 500 millions ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... on my way in a condition of astonishment that engendered, almost, a doubt of my eyes; for if my sight was unimpaired and myself not subject to optical or mental delusion, neither boy nor dog nor bird nor cat, nor any other object of this visible world, had entered that opened door. Was my "finest" house, then, a place of call for wandering ghosts, who came home to roost at four in ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... quantity) 32; fragment &c. (small part) 51; powder &c. 330; point of a pin, mathematical point; minutiae &c. (unimportance) 643. micrometer; vernier; scale. microphotography, photomicrography, micrography[obs3]; photomicrograph, microphotograph; microscopy; microscope (optical instruments) 445.. V. be little &c. adj.; lie in a nutshell; become small &c. (decrease) 36, (contract) 195. Adj. little; small &c. (in quantity) 32; minute, diminutive, microscopic; microzoal; inconsiderable &c. (unimportant) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... specimens of this ware had been brought by the Portuguese from China, which were sold for more than their weight in gold. Bottgher was first induced to turn his attention to the subject by Walter von Tschirnhaus, a maker of optical instruments, also an alchemist. Tschirnhaus was a man of education and distinction, and was held in much esteem by Prince Furstenburg as well as by the Elector. He very sensibly said to Bottgher, still in fear of the gallows—"If you can't make gold, try and do something ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... perception of that underlying unity, for the demonstration of which he had been labouring since 1901. But the dream of his life was not yet realised. No direct method of obtaining response record was yet obtained. Hitherto the response recorder employed was a modification of the optical lever, automatic records being secured by the very inconvenient and tedious process of photography (which again introduced complications by subjecting a plant to darkness and thereby modifying its normal excitability); and ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... by phantasmagorists is further increased by the mystery that conceals, from the eyes of the public, their operations and optical instruments: but it is easy for the showman to snatch from them this superiority, and to strengthen the illusion for the children whom you choose to amuse with this sight. For that purpose, he has only to change the arrangement of the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... sails away on the air and goes out of sight; then you throw up a clod and it doesn't. It comes down, every time. I have tried it and tried it, and it is always so. I wonder why it is? Of course it DOESN'T come down, but why should it SEEM to? I suppose it is an optical illusion. I mean, one of them is. I don't know which one. It may be the feather, it may be the clod; I can't prove which it is, I can only demonstrate that one or the other is a fake, and let a ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... This is an optical effect due to a peculiar condition of the desert atmosphere. The traveler suddenly sees trees, grass, and running water, apparently a short distance before him. He hastens eagerly forward to lie in the ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... an accidental ray of light broke upon him in a way not now intelligible, or barely intelligible. Half the extreme breadth intercepted between the circle and oval was 429/100,000 of the radius, and he remembered that the "optical inequality" of Mars was also about 429/100,000. This coincidence, in his own words, woke him out of sleep; and for some reason or other impelled him instantly to try making the planet oscillate in the diameter ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... strangely like Mr. Murray's. She leaned out and watched it till the cars swept round a curve, and lamp and figure and village vanished. How could he possibly be in Chattanooga? The conjecture was absurd; she was the victim of some optical illusion. With a long, heavily-drawn sigh, she leaned against the window-frame and looked at the dark mountain mass looming behind her; and after a time, when the storm drew nearer, she saw it only now and ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... curtains grow to a blaze, as if blown up by a pair of bellows; in another moment the gleams of flame grew brighter, and she fancied that three masked figures suddenly flashed out; but the terrible vision disappeared so swiftly that she took it for an optical delusion. ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... the mechanical skill displayed in the formation of the eye, and then the optical arrangements, or rather a few of them, for there are more than eight hundred distinct contrivances already observed by anatomists in the dead eye, while the great contrivance of all, the power of seeing, is utterly beyond their ken. I ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Glow-worm has her tricks for summoning her swains, the male, on his side, is provided with an optical apparatus suited to catch from afar the least reflection of the calling signal. His corselet expands into a shield and overlaps his head considerably in the form of a peaked cap or a shade, the object ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... and palms with long drooping creepers, and a blaze of brilliant orchids. Smoking-room, house, England, all were gone, and he sat on a settee in the heart of a virgin forest of the Amazon. It was no mere optical delusion or trick. He could see the hot steam rising from the tropical undergrowth, the heavy drops falling from the huge green leaves, the very grain and fibre of the rough bark which clothed the trunks. Even as he gazed a green mottled snake curled noiselessly ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... news story had come two nights before, when the Nipe had robbed an optical products company in Miami. The camera had shown the shop on the screen. Whatever had been used to blow open the door of the vault had been more effective than necessary. It had taken the whole front door of the shop and ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... he, "my ideas of natural beauty and those of the aesthetic Wilde may be entirely false; or the whole scene may be an optical illusion; or—Rosenduft und Maienblumen, observe ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... well known: the Scriptores Logarithmici[468] is a set of valuable reprints, mixed {207} with much which might better have entered into another collection. It is not so well known that there is a volume of optical reprints, Scriptores Optici, London, 1823, 4to, edited for the veteran of ninety-two by Mr. Babbage[469] at twenty-nine. This excellent volume contains James Gregory, Des Cartes, Halley, Barrow, and the optical writings of Huyghens, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... terror, she struck her hands to her eyes, as if to dispel an optical illusion, and sank half fainting, to be caught in the arms of her uncle and laid against the side of the rocks, while he sprinkled her face with water from ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... sickly, incredulous smile when they first heard the grim announcement and wondered whether, after all, the new head-master was an escaped lunatic. A few gifted with more presence of mind than others bethought them of visiting the shop and of dispelling the hideous nightmare by optical demonstration. ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... hollowed out into a cup and illuminated by narrow slits, has advantage over any shape or kind of glass protection. A French metal device of the same order that is advertised in the dealer's catalogues was found to fail, perhaps owing to a wrong optical arrangement of the slits. It caused an eye-strain that brought on headache. But if that principle could be scientifically worked out and such a device perfected, it would be a boon to the traveller over sun-lit snow, for it would do away with glass altogether, ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... We all have our particular mode of self-expression in moments of elation. Fillmore's took the shape of buying a new waistcoat and a hundred half-dollar cigars and being very fussy about what he had for lunch. It may have been an optical illusion, but he appeared to Sally to put on at least six pounds in weight on the first day of the new regime. As a serf looking after paper-knives and other properties, he had been—for him—almost slim. As a manager he blossomed out into soft billowy curves, and when he stood on the sidewalk ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... "Patrons of Astronomy," in the Mirror, No. 328, brought to my recollection the following anecdote, for the truth of which I can answer, having received it from Mr. Watson, well known as the most celebrated private optical instrument maker in Europe, and at the time living on intimate terms with the late Mr. Arnold, the most eminent watchmaker of the day. When the late Sir William Herschel's great telescope was first exhibited at Slough, among other scientific men who went to see it was Mr. Arnold, who ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... rolled up, heaving at levers, smiting with sledge-hammers, in full view of the street, on the margin of the canal, just above Central Street Bridge. I rubbed my eyes, half expecting that I was the subject of mere optical illusion; but a second look only confirmed the first. Around me were solemn, go-to-meeting faces,—smileless and awful; and close at hand were the delving, toiling, mud-begrimed laborers. Nobody seemed surprised at it; nobody noticed ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... mixture. The name was afterwards applied by G. Tschermak to those plagioclase felspars which lie between labradorite and anorthite; and this has been generally adopted by petrologists. In chemical composition and in optical and other physical characters it is thus much nearer to the anorthite end of the series than to albite. Like labradorite and anorthite, it is a common constituent of basic igneous rocks, such as gabbro and basalt. Isolated crystals of bytownite ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... of and to delude us; we call to our assistance the artifices of the charlatans, who do so many things which pass for supernatural in the eyes of the ignorant. Philosophers, by means of certain glasses, and what are called magic lanterns, by optical secrets, sympathetic powders, by their phosphorus, and lately by means of the electrical machine, show us an infinite number of things which the simpletons take for magic, because they know not how they ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... action of water. The hypothesis therefore must be classified under Xenogenesis, rather than under Abiogenesis. Such as it was, I think it will appear, to those who will be just enough to remember that it was propounded before the birth of modern chemistry, and of the modern optical arts, to be a most ingenious and ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... promontory have gradually faded away, until nothing has remained but the blue sky above, and the deep blue water below. Hence it was termed by the geographers of old, Aprositus, or the Inaccessible; while modern navigators have called its very existence in question, pronouncing it a mere optical illusion, like the Fata Morgana of the Straits of Messina; or classing it with those unsubstantial regions known to mariners as Cape Flyaway, and the Coast of ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... throat, and the swift disappearance of the vision immediately upon your full awakening—all well-known features of incubus," replied Mr. Berners. But again he thought of the shadow he had seen; now, however, only to dismiss the subject as an optical illusion. ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... other." Deuteronomy xxviii. 8: "Thy heaven over thee shall be as brass." Deuteronomy ii. 25: "This day I will begin to put the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven." And so commonly throughout the Bible, "the clouds of heaven," "the fowls of heaven," refer to the optical heavens. Such is the meaning in Genesis. Noah describes the deluge as it appeared to him, as covering all the hills within the horizon of observation, and Moses ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... motors, television sets, refrigerators and freezers, petroleum refining, shipbuilding (small ships), furniture making, textiles, food processing, fertilizers, agricultural machinery, optical ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... I told you of the singular experience I had some five or six years ago with an old astronomer, who thought he had established an optical telegraph to Mars?" ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... he had whipped out an opera-glass from his pocket, large enough to have been formed out of two moderate-sized specimens of the optical instrument he had named, and levelled it at the object on the wall. His observations and those of Harding through the same powerful instrument resulted in the same conclusion. The two red bars and one white one ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... the average individual. Longer gastroscopes are used, when necessary, to explore a ptosed stomach. Various lens-system gastroscopes have been devised, which afford an excellent view of the walls of the air-inflated stomach. The optical system, however, interferes with the insertion of instruments, so that the open-tube gastroscope is required for the removal of gastric foreign bodies, the palpation of, or sponging secretions from, gastric lesions. The open-tube gastroscope may be closed with a window plug (Fig. 6) having ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... only hope to call your attention to one phase of this important subject. For a number of years I have been practically interested in the subject of the production of plane and curved surfaces particularly for optical purposes, i.e., in the production of such surfaces free if possible from all traces of error, and it will be pleasant to me if I shall be able to add to the interest of this association by giving you some of my own ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... the approach of enemies; the eyes have no power to see. But we have not reached the ultimate accessible structure of this organ. If we place a portion of the surface under one of the finest of our most powerful lenses, this will be the result.[6] Now, without discussing the real optical or anatomical value of this result as it stands, what I desire to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... he exclaimed, "it is wonderful! I have succeeded! I have changed the principles of a lifetime, made the most brilliant optical experiment which any man of science has ever ventured to essay, with the result—well, you shall see. I have wired to the Admiralty, wired for more work-people. Captain Chalmers, is it not?" he ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of these overall complexities that must be met with automatic accuracy was the Starrett Analogue/Digital Computer, Optical Wave type 44-63, irreverently referred to by the acronymically-minded as Sad Cow, though more frequently as the Sacred Cow, ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... increasing in their acreage; and the farmhouses which had been without windows in their outer walls, now sometimes opened as many as two to the passing train. Flocks of black sheep and goats, through the optical illusion frequent in the Spanish air, looked large as cattle in the offing. Only in one place had we seen the tumbled boulders of Old Castile, and there had been really no greater objection to La Mancha than that it was flat, stale, and unprofitable ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... telescopes used. In these instruments two distinct functions may be observed: their light-gathering power depends on the diameter of their object mirror or lens, their defining power depends on the exquisite correctness of their optical surfaces. Grand instruments may possess the former quality in perfection by reason of their size, but the latter very imperfectly, either through want of original configuration, or distortion arising from flexure through their own weight. But, unless an instrument be perfect in this respect, as well ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... labourers. Political Condition of the Indians. Indian Village and huts. Cotton-spinning. The Indian Alcalde. Great Cave of Cacahuamilpan. Optical phenomenon. Monk on horseback. Religion of the Indians. Idols. Baptism by wholesale. Village amusements. Dancing. Chalma. The meson and the convent. Church-dances. The miller's daughter. Young friar. The Hill ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... Telecommunications Satellite Organization (Paris). Fiber-optic cable - a multichannel communications cable using a thread of optical glass fibers as a transmission medium in which the signal (voice, video, etc.) is in the form of ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... and found that he had a two-hour wait until the Mons Capa ferry left for Tangier, and spent the time wandering up and down Main Street, staring into the Indian shops with their tax-free cameras from Common Europe, textiles from England, optical equipment from Japan, and cheap souvenirs from everywhere. Gibraltar, the tourist's ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... the field was blurred, for a while, by the smoke from so much firing, which floated in thickening clouds over all the open spaces and the edges of the forest. It produced curious optical illusions. The French loomed through it, increased fourfold in numbers, every individual man magnified in size. He saw them lurid and gigantic, pulling the triggers of their rifles or muskets, or working the batteries. The cannon also grew ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... experienced it, form any idea of the optical illusions, which are produced by mist, in regions where the size of the objects which are visible through the fog is not known beforehand, and thus does not give the spectator an idea of the distance. ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... exhibits the same coloration when treated with iodine. As degradation proceeds, and the products become more and more soluble and diffusible, the blue reaction with iodine gives place first to a purple, then to a reddish colour, and finally the coloration ceases altogether. In the same way, the optical rotating power decreases, and the cupric reducing power (towards Fehling's solution) increases, as the process of hydrolysis proceeds. C. O'Sullivan was the first to point out definitely the influence of the temperature of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... last letter which Gordon sent from Khartoum closed with the words, 'The hosts are with me—Mahanaim.' Were they not, even though death was near? Was that sublime faith a mistake—the vision an optical delusion? No, for their ranks are arrayed around God's children to keep them from all evil while He wills that they should live, and their chariots of fire and horses of fire are sent to bear them to heaven when He ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... direction of the Pactolus claim. His only difficulty was that, as a matter of fact, the solitary mound of white earth which marked the entrance to the mine, suddenly appeared before his eyes in a double condition, and he beheld two Pactolus claims, which curious optical delusion rather confused him, inasmuch as he was undecided to which he ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... ophthalmology in a diagnosis of optical diseases, tell us of a symptom of infirmity which they call pseudoblepsis, or 'false sight.' Legal vision exhibits, now and then, a corresponding phase of unconscious perversion of sight, whereby objects are perceived ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... tension a little lower than that required for the positive ball: second, that when discharge does take place, much more passes at each time from the positive than from the negative surface (1491.). The last conclusion is very abundantly proved by the optical analysis of the positive and negative brushes already described (1468.), the latter set of discharges being found to recur five or six times oftener ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... see no very great difficulty (not more than in the case of many other structures) in believing that natural selection has converted the simple apparatus of an optic nerve merely coated with pigment and invested by transparent membrane, into an optical instrument as perfect as is possessed by any member ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... search after the Creator, in the light of natural theology. He goes through the proof for final cause and design, as given in a summary though clear, plain, and convincing form, in the pages of Paley and the "Bridgewater Treatises." The eye and the hand, those perfect instruments of optical and mechanical contrivance and adaptation, without the least waste or surplusage—these, say Paley and Bell, certainly prove a designing maker as much as the palace or the watch proves an architect or a watchmaker. Let this mind, in this state, cross Darwin's ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... enough! Her nose seems to have turned up more; but perhaps that's an optical illusion; she talks so sarcastically now-a-days that I seem to see it." Hannah smiled a little. "She doesn't think much of Jewish young men. By the way, are ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... accomplishing the result, was made many years before the instantaneous photograph became possible. While the first motion picture was not actually produced until the summer of 1889, its real birth was almost a century earlier, when Plateau, in France, constructed an optical toy, to which the impressive name of "Phenakistoscope" was applied, for producing an illusion of motion. This toy in turn was the forerunner of the Zoetrope, or so-called "Wheel of Life," which was introduced ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... gazing out of the window. He had always now, when he looked out of a window, the sensation of a man who was passing in rapid motion all the old familiar objects, all the landmarks of his life, or rather—for one never rids one's self of that particular optical delusion—it was as if they were passing. The conviction of one's own transit is difficult to achieve. Harry gazed out of the window, and it was to him as if the familiar trees which bordered the sidewalk, the shrubs in the yard, ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... ask Rochester about him the first thing to-morrow; and unless he is an optical illusion—which I vow I half believe is the case—I will come at the truth in spite of your demoniac ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... the way clear for actual work without further experiment. I have not been able by any arrangement of reflected light to get power enough to print negatives of the ordinary density, and have only succeeded by causing the light to be equally dispersed over the negative by a lens as used in the optical lantern, but the arrangements required are somewhat different to that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... beautiful nosegay in a vase, which appeared to be composed of the rarest flowers. I approached it with an intention of inhaling its fragrance, when, lo! my hand passed through it. It was an exquisite optical illusion. "Ah!" said my elegant and moralising companion, Madame S——, smiling, "of such flowers has Happiness composed her wreath: it is thus she gladdens with it the eye of Hope; but the hand of Expectation ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... to be glaring and grinning on me like a fiend, in the one instant of its duration. For the moment, it required all my knowledge of the settled calmness of his countenance, to convince me that my eyes must have been only dazzled by an optical illusion produced by ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... Bowman has observed the hereditary tendency in this direction to be heightened, and some of the children to be myopic at an earlier age or in a higher degree than their parents. Thirdly, squinting is a familiar example of hereditary transmission: it is frequently a result of such optical defects as have been above mentioned; but the more primary and uncomplicated forms of it are also sometimes in a marked degree transmitted in a family. Fourthly, Cataract, or opacity of the crystalline lens, is commonly observed in persons whose parents have been similarly ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
