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Propulsion   Listen
noun
Propulsion  n.  
1.
The act driving forward or away; the act or process of propelling; as, steam propulsion.
2.
An impelling act or movement. "God works in all things; all obey His first propulsion."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Propulsion" Quotes from Famous Books



... under- 67:12 standing, firm at the post of duty, the mariner works on and awaits the issue. Thus should we deport ourselves on the seething ocean of sorrow. Hoping and work- 67:15 ing, one should stick to the wreck, until an irresistible propulsion precipitates his doom or ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... palmated feet, have what is called the lobate foot, which means that the digits have broad lobes or flaps on their sides. While in such cases the toes are all distinct, the expanded lobes serve almost, if not quite, as good a purpose for propulsion in the water as do the webs. The coot swims almost as well as the duck or the goose, and at the same time his feet, with their disconnected toes, are better adapted for paddling about amid the watergrass and dense weeds than if they ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... their trust, often in the midst of appalling dangers. Crusoe sprang from the bank with such impetus that his broad chest ploughed up the water like the bow of a boat, and the energetic workings of his muscles were indicated by the force of each successive propulsion ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... was clearly a mast with a sail, though, as there was very little wind that morning, the sail hung idly by the mast. A little later we were able to be sure that what we saw was a kind of raft, with, as I have said, a mast and sail, but that its propulsion came from some human beings who were aboard it, and who were causing its slow progress with oars. By this time I had got out a spy-glass from our tent; and then Lancelot gave a cry of amazement, for he recognised in ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... question of twin screw propulsion has been put to the test upon a large scale in the mercantile marine, or rather in what would usually be termed the passenger service. While engineers, however, are prepared to admit its advantages so far ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various

... exception of Miss Toddle, no customer appeared. The teams went slowly down the steep side of the Square in an unbroken line, and slowly down the street leading from its near corner. On the slope the horses were unable to go fast—being forced to stell themselves back against the heavy propulsion of the carts behind; and thus the procession endured for a length of time worthy its surpassing greatness. When it disappeared round the Bend o' the Brae the watching bodies disappeared too; the event of the day had passed, and ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... most of our ports from the markets supplied by European manufactures, for a long time to come make the home-supply the chief care of our artisans. They have, for such and other reasons, in some points lost ground of late. The revolution in the propulsion and construction of ships, for instance, has not found them prepared to take the advantage they have usually done of improvements. Not only do the British screw-steamers take undisputed possession of our trade with their own country, but they expel ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... channels are shallow, poles are used, which the men handled very dexterously, nicking in and out amongst the rocks and rapids in the neatest way; but in the main the propulsion was by our paddles, a delight to me, having been bred to canoeing from boyhood. We stopped for luncheon at a lovely "place of trees" overhanging a deep, dark, alluring pool, where we knew there were fish, but had no time to make a cast. ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair

... in the side of the ship opened, and a dozen spacesuited men leaped out. The propulsion units in their hands guided ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)

... were found near the spot where they had encamped. The pith of the same palm served him for the swell of the arrow, which, being compressible like cork, fills up the tube of the sumpitan, and renders the shaft subject to propulsion from the quick puff of breath which the blow-gun marksman, from long practice, ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... to have written his essays with Shakspeare's pen. There is a certain want of ease about the old writers which has an irresistible charm. The language flows like a stream over a pebbled bed, with propulsion, eddy, and sweet recoil—the pebbles, if retarding movement, giving ring and dimple to the surface, and breaking the whole into babbling music. There is a ceremoniousness in the mental habits of these ancients. Their intellectual garniture is picturesque, like ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... discovery which both pleased and alarmed them. Such a float as they needed was at their call. There lay a half dozen logs and trees fastened together by several withes, and with enough buoyancy to bear them to the other side. Even the pole to be used in propulsion lay upon the heavy timbers that were pulled just far enough against the bank to prevent them ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... hope ever that it has been for the best and pray for you always. Oh that your feet may be set in the right path and that we may walk hand in hand upon the way to Zion!'" Lindsay lowered his voice and read the last sentences rapidly, as if the propulsion of the first part of the letter sent him through them. Then he stopped abruptly, and Alicia ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... made by placing a vertical shaft or stake, provided with a couple of old cart-wheels, in a hole in the ice. One wheel acts as a turning base and prevents the shaft from sinking into the pond, and the other forms a support for the long sweep attached for propulsion purposes, and should be fastened to the shaft about 3 ft. above the base wheel. The sleds are made fast in a string to the long end of the sweep, which when turned rapidly causes the sleds to slide over the ice in a circle at a ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... that they act unequally upon the mass, and thus mix and divide it more perfectly. No blades or projections are affixed to the interior of the cylinder. Above, where the peat enters into a flaring hopper, is a scraper, that prevents adhesion to the sides and gives downward propulsion to the peat. The blades are, by this construction, very strong, and not liable to injury from small stones or roots, and effectually reduce the ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson

... Ste. Marie looked over the guard-rail and saw that the driver had left his place and was kneeling in the dust beside the car peering at its underworks. The conductor strolled round to him after a moment and stood indifferently by, remarking upon the strange vicissitudes to which electrical propulsion is subject. The driver, without looking up, called his colleague a number of the most surprising and, it is to be hoped, unwarranted names, and suddenly began to burrow under the tram, wriggling his ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... swift, staccato sentences into the report-transmitter. Describing the clumsy glittering monster, its motion; its wings; its method of propulsion. It seemed somehow familiar despite ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... no account, be touched with the foot, but merely slapped playfully, enough for the purposes of propulsion, with the palm ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various

... also covered practically all the yard at the South Shaft and materially increased the available working area. The telphers were built by the Dodge Cold Storage Company, and were operated by a 75-h.p. General Electric motor for hoisting and a 15-h.p. Northern Electric Company motor for propulsion. Their rated lifting capacity was 10,000 lb. at a speed ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace and Francis Mason

... Euphrates and Tigris as possible, and when a stone monster had to be carried to a town situated at some distance from both those rivers the canals by which the country was intersected in every direction supplied their place. Going down stream, and especially in flood time, no means of propulsion were required; the course of the boats or rafts was directed by means of heavy oars like those still used by the boatmen who navigate the Tigris in keleks, or rafts, supported on inflated hides; in ascending the streams towing ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... its position, the Leviathan's tail acts in a different manner from the tails of all other sea creatures. It never wriggles. In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority. To the whale, his tail is the sole means of propulsion. Scroll-wise coiled forwards beneath the body, and then rapidly sprung backwards, it is this which gives that singular darting, leaping motion to the monster when furiously swimming. His side-fins only serve ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... steamers—the first a screw, commanded by Captain Yelverton, and the second by Captain Hall—had been detached from the fleet, and employed for a considerable time in reconnoitring the forts of the enemy about Hango Bay. Propulsion by means of a screw was at this time a novelty, the steamships of war being generally large paddle boats and sailing ships combined, a state of transition between the frigate of Nelson's day ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... are not less peculiar than its limbs. The living engine, like all others, must be well stoked if it is to do its work; and the horse, if it is to make good its wear and tear, and to exert the enormous amount of force required for its propulsion, must be well and rapidly fed. To this end, good cutting instruments and powerful and lasting crushers are needful. Accordingly, the twelve cutting teeth of a horse are close-set and concentrated in the fore-part ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... were in imminent danger; we had out all the firearms we could muster; these amounted to two rifles, two shot guns, and five revolvers. I watched with great keenness the motion of their arms that gives the propulsion to their spears, and the instant I observed that, I ordered a discharge of the two rifles and one gun, as it was no use waiting to be speared first. I delayed almost a second too long, for at the instant I gave the word several spears had left the enemy's hands, and it was with great ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... in lobtailing; Fifth, in peaking flukes. First: Being horizontal in its position, the Leviathan's tail acts in a different manner from the tails of all other sea creatures. It never wriggles. In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority. To the whale, his tail is the sole means of propulsion. Scroll-wise coiled forwards beneath the body, and then rapidly sprung backwards, it is this which gives that singular darting, leaping motion to the monster when furiously swimming. His side-fins only serve to steer ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... has inexorable limitations. Break her machinery, and, if there be no friendly dock open to receive her, she is reduced at once to a sailing ship, and generally a poor one, too. Nor need you suppose accidents to cause this loss of efficiency. The mode of propulsion implies brevity of power. The galley depended upon the stalwart arms of its crew, and they were as likely to be strong to-morrow as to-day, and next month as to-morrow. The ship puts her trust in her white sails and in the free winds of heaven, which, however fickle they may ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... the Sea Hound, latest and largest model of Tom's amazing diving seacopter. It had an enclosed central rotor, powered by atomic turbines, with reversible-pitch blades for air lift or undersea diving. Superheated steam jets provided forward propulsion in ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... will support our hopes. What will fascinate us in the past will be the records of inventions, of great choices, of those alternatives on which destiny seems to hang. The splendid epochs will be interpreted as monuments of man's creation, not of his propulsion. We shall be interested primarily in the way nations established their civilization in spite of hostile conditions. Admiration will go out to the men who did not submit, who bent things to human use. We may see the entire tragedy ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... Betty as soon as he found opportunity. He did not quite know why. He did not stop to ask himself why. It was a purely instinctive propulsion. He followed his impulse as the needle swings to the pole; as an object released from the hand at a great height obeys the force of gravity; as water ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... I should have advertised you that the meaning is frequently hard to be got at,—and so are the future guineas that now lie ripening and aurifying in the womb of some undiscovered Potosi; but dig, dig, dig, dig, Manning! I set to with an unconquerable propulsion to write, with a lamentable want of what to write. My private goings on are orderly as the movements of the spheres, and stale as their music to angels' ears. Public affairs, except as they touch upon me, and so turn into private, I cannot whip up my mind to feel any interest ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... that it possess a third reflex arc—a "heat spot" so connected with the same or other fins that when stimulated by a certain intensity of heat it initiates a nervous impulse which stops the forward propulsion. The animal is still "lashed," but nevertheless no light can force it to swim "blindly to its death" by scalding. It has the rudiments of "intelligence." But so it had before. For as soon as two reflex arcs capacitate it mechanically to swim toward light, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... to the horrors of starvation. I positively dreaded to think of what might be the effect of this upon the women; therefore, that we might not lie there absolutely helpless, I started to scull the boat with the steering oar. But she was heavy for this style of propulsion, and I estimated that our progress did not amount to more than three-quarters of ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... fishermen, and at present moored to a stake at the river-bank. It was capacious, certainly, but not exactly the sort of boat in which to get up much pace, particularly as its sole apparent mode of propulsion was by means of two very long boat-hooks, one on either side. These details, however, presented few obstacles to the minds of the enterprising explorers. The punt was in many ways adapted for a voyage such as they proposed to take. There was room to walk about in it. Nay, who should say ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... upon the proceeds, and kept a cheerful spirit till the last soldo was spent, inventing one thing after another, and giving much time and money to a new principle of steam propulsion, which, as applied without steam to a small boat on the canal before his door, failed to work, though it had no logical excuse for its delinquency. He tried to get other pupils, but he got none, and he began to dream of going to America. He pinned his ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... be located. This same James Furnivale Woolsen, being an ambitious person, was not to be so easily put down. Besides the consent and petitions, which Cowperwood could not easily get away from him, he had a new form of traction then being tried out in several minor cities—a form of electric propulsion by means of an overhead wire and a traveling pole, which was said to be very economical, and to give a service better than cables ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... first-class carriage weighs 6 tons 10 cwts.; a second-class, 5 tons 10 cwts., each with passengers; a Pullman car weighs about 30 tons. Our steamers consume 5 lbs. of coal per horse-power in one hour. And last, not least, one of the greatest improvements we have had in steam propulsion is the screw. Again, I may also name the great advantage derived from steam by our farmers in thrashing out grain. The engines principally used in farm-work are what are termed high-pressure, or of the same class as the locomotive. The great saving in cost in the first place, the simplicity ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... turns down suddenly at right angles with the head, it much resembles an elephant's trunk shorn off at the mouth. Its length averages from eight to fourteen feet; there is no dorsal fin, and the tail is horizontal; colour blue, and white beneath. Its means of propulsion are two paddles, with which it also crawls along the bottom, and beneath which are situated the udders, with teats exactly like a cow's. Its flesh is far from bad, resembling lean beef in appearance, though hardly so good to the taste, ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... shipping, a decline hastened by the use of iron, and then steel, for hulls. Though we credit ourselves—not without some protest from England—with the invention of the steamboat, the adaptation of the screw to the propulsion of vessels, and the invention of triple-expansion engines, yet it was England that seized upon these inventions and with them won, and long held, the commercial mastery of the seas. To-day (1902) it seems that economic conditions ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... works in all things; all obey His first propulsion from the night Wake thou and watch! the world is ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... passion of canine hunger and days of isolation, but the master was gone to Leech Lake, as we afterward found from his Cass Lake neighbors. The wind favored a sail across the lake—a welcome variation from our hitherto entirely muscular propulsion—so we rigged our spars and canvas, drifted smoothly out into the trough of the lively but not angry waves, and swept swiftly across the clear, bright little sea. The white caps dashed over our decks and a few sharp puffs half careened our little ships, but the crossing was safely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... as it was called, didn't advertise what sort of thing it was developing—but everybody knew that Lyman Dane was an expert on reactive propulsion of rocket motors. He could tell you—and frequently would without being asked—exactly what mass ratio, nozzle diameter and propulsive velocity would be needed for the first trip to the Moon. He knew how many hours a round trip would take, both ...
— This is Klon Calling • Walt Sheldon

... world is indebted to Robert Fulton for the practical application of steam to the purposes of navigation. Whatever has been claimed for or by others in regard to the priority of the invention or application of the mighty power of steam to the propulsion of vessels, Fulton was "the first to apply it with any degree of practical success," as an English work states it. As one who labored for years over the idea which came from his own brain, though it also came to others, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... propelled by the ripples of a pond? Vibrations of the water, really. Well, evidently there are somewhat similar vibrations in the ether, cosmic force. Each one of these flying torpedoes contains a highly expensive, intricate mechanism which transforms this invisible vibration-power into material propulsion. The mechanism is adjusted to propel the torpedo at such an altitude in such a direction. We possess no means of setting the machines to stop at a certain place and so tumble earthwards. That's where you and Hay ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... the merchant marine of all classes in ocean service, sailing-ships as well as steamers. The situation had become acute. Through the great loss of tonnage in the Civil War, and through the steadily advancing change from wood to iron in ship construction and from sail to steam propulsion, the American merchant marine had been brought distressingly low. From 1861, when the United States was standing second in rank among the nations in the extent of her ocean tonnage, to 1866, this tonnage had declined from 2,642,648 to 1,492,926 tons: a loss of more than forty-three per ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon

... begin, no matter how dimly, to perceive something of the causes which are at work. By the incoming of the European to inland China a transformation is being wrought, not the natural growth of a gradual evolution, itself the result of propulsion from within, but produced, on the contrary, by artificial means, in bitter conflict with inherent instincts, inherited traditions, innate tendencies, characteristics, and genius, racial and individual. In the eyes of the Chinese of the old school these changes in ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... occurred to me that, as I possessed neither oars nor other means of propulsion, it would be difficult to move the boat from its mooring if chance or acuteness of scent should lead the creature to my place of concealment. In short, this, with various suggestions of fancy, some of them ludicrously ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... with the suit's servomotors and propulsion units, motion across the ice, against the buffeting wind, was a cumbersome business. But Massan continued to work his way across the iceberg, fighting down a gnawing, growing fear that Odal was ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova

... BICYCLE PROPULSION.—So much has been invented for and said about bicycles, that it seems strange that anything is left to say or to do, yet here is a very novel idea. It is not so very long since wind and water were the only motor powers, but those days are so clearly superseded that ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 42, August 26, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... his cabin on board the vessel. Dr. Mitchell was immediately summoned; but, before he reached the poor captain, he was dead. A postmortem examination revealed the cause of his unfortunate disease. His heart was found literally torn in twain! The tremendous propulsion of blood, consequent upon such a violent nervous shock, forced the powerful muscle tissues asunder, and life was at an ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... with them at first, and doing no more than to ascertain their speed and power of propulsion, and had all along intended to reserve themselves for this triumph at the last. As soon as we reached the winning point, I rose up to give the cheer of victory, but just at that moment, they suddenly backed water with their paddles, and in turning ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... chord of the arc of the other's flight, Michael closed his jaws on the back and side of the neck. Such abrupt arrest in mid-flight by the heavier dog brought the fox-terrier down on deck with, a heavy thump. Simultaneous with this, Captain Duncan's second kick landed, communicating such propulsion to Michael as to tear his clenched teeth through the flesh and out of ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... sombre view of pleasure which tended to repress poetry in the attempt to repress vice. Sorrow and joy have each their peculiar narrowness; and a religious enthusiasm like Savonarola's which ultimately blesses mankind by giving the soul a strong propulsion towards sympathy with pain, indignation against wrong, and the subjugation of sensual desire, must always incur the reproach of a great negation. Romola's life had given her an affinity for sadness which inevitably made her unjust towards merriment. That subtle result of ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... what mattered their envy, so long as they envied? The tonic north wind, the sunshine, the sparkle of the water, the gay lines of bunting flickering from stem to stern of the Committee Ship, the invigorating blare of the Troy Town Band, now throwing its soul into "Champagne Charlie," the propulsion of the oars that seemed to snatch her and sweep her forward past wondering faces to high destiny— all these were wings, and lifted her spirit with them. She began to under stand what it must feel like to be a Queen, or (at ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... was to swim to it, propelling the raft and its fair burden before him. This was a decidedly formidable task to undertake; for the raft, being rectangular in shape, and drawing about two feet of water, offered a very considerable amount of resistance to propulsion, especially under the unfavourable conditions which were the only ones possible; still there was no other task upon which Leslie could employ himself—and he felt that it was imperative to do something, ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... ship in the lake, but there was a three-stage rocket set up, ready for firing. It was of the kind used by humans to put artificial satellites into orbit. Lockley even knew its designation, and that it used the new solid fuels for propulsion. ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... the gravity propulsion plates too," Carse said shortly. "Their adjustment's been ruined by it, and we're out of control, turning over and over. I couldn't possibly see Judd. Well, we've got to go down to the plates ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore

... Hardin, as he sees these dazzling rockets rise, with golden trails, into the social darkness of the Western skies, "they are really the upper classes here. Their power of propulsion to the zenith is inherent in themselves. If they mingle, in time, with the aristocratic noblesse of Europe, they may infuse a certain picturesque element." Hardin realizes that some of the children of these millionnaires of a day ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... canoe propulsion was forced on them. They came to a long stretch of smooth, deep, very swift water, almost a rapid-one of the kind that is a joy when you are coming down stream. It differed from the last in having shores ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... purpose, as a rule, is to move, or control the movement of, materials within cavities and tubes, and they do this by means of the pressure which they exert. Examples of their action have already been studied in the propulsion of the food through the alimentary canal and in the regulation of the flow of blood through the arteries (pages 159 and 49). While they do not contract so quickly, nor with such great force as the striated muscles, their work ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... He was neither enterprising nor inquisitive; he kept close to the rim of her skirt, which was as high as he could see, and he wished to be taken up and carried again. He was in a half-stupor; it was his desire to remain in that condition, and his propulsion was almost wholly subconscious, though surprisingly rapid, ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... the attendant distractions,—the pinching together of the hand, to form the needed notch, the perfect art of which, like fist-clenching, is unattainable by woman, who substitutes some queerness all her own,—the fierce grasping and propulsion of the cue,—the loving reclension upon the table when the long shots come in,—the dainty foot, uprising, to preserve the owner's balance, but, as it gleams suspended, destroying the observer's,—all combine, as they did this time, to scatter stern ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... his father. "There is something strange about him. He was very anxious that I should compete. Probably he thought his firm's boat would go so far ahead of ours that they would get an extra bonus. But I'm glad he didn't see our new method of propulsion. That is the principal improvement in the Advance over other types of submarines. Well, another week and we will ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton

... ungovernable desire of venereal indulgence. The remote cause is probably the stimulus of the semen; whence the phallus becomes distended with blood by the arterial propulsion of it being more strongly excited than the correspondent venous absorption. At the same time a new sense is produced in the other termination of the urethra; which, like itching, requires some exterior friction to facilitate ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... distance without vegetation. Here the two men grappled. There was some hard squeezing, some quick bending either way, a final powerful forcing forward of the arms on the part of Blaise, a last violent propulsion of the same arms, and Barbemouche was thrown backward down the precipice. Blaise stood for a time looking oven. We heard a series of dull concussions, a sound of the flight of detached small ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens

... search of the deserter, but he applied himself heartily to the propulsion of aunt Ermine, informing Rose that Mr. Clare was no end of a man, much better than if he could see, and aunt Rachel ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... white canoe was approaching, still gliding noiselessly over the water, without any apparent power of propulsion, and in it were seated two men. One had a long white beard and a profusion of white hair. He was dressed entirely in white, and sat in the stern of the canoe. The other was Captain Justin Bellwood, quite unharmed, and looking very much ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish

... did the accounts of the Caesarian section, and of the towering geniuses who had come safe into the world by it, cast upon this hypothesis? Here you see, he would say, there was no injury done to the sensorium;—no pressure of the head against the pelvis;—no propulsion of the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, either by the os pubis on this side, or os coxygis on that;—and pray, what were the happy consequences? Why, Sir, your Julius Caesar, who gave the operation a name;—and your Hermes Trismegistus, who was born so before ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... things out clearly; she simply followed the blind propulsion of her wretchedness. She did not want, ever again, to see anyone she had known; above all, she did not want to ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... convict-hulk, and seeing the anchor-founderies in operation, the Khan crossed to Blackwall, and returned to town by the railway, his first conveyance when he landed in England. His increased experience in steam-travelling had now, however, enabled him to detect the difference between the mode of propulsion by engines on the other railroads, and the "immense cables made of iron wires" by which the vehicles are drawn on this line; the construction of which, as well as the electro-telegraph, ("a process ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... Earth. For peaceful purposes, however, such a space mirror could be used to melt icebergs and alter temperatures."[14] Another reputable German scientist who has been working for a number of years on photon (electromagnetic ray) power as a source of propulsion, declares that if such power is possible so is "the idea of a 'death ray,' a weapon beam which burns or melts targets, such as enemy missiles, on which it is trained. The idea has been familiar in ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics

... a market, farmers were not disposed to inquire into the mysteries of high finance and the nature of public credit. All doubts were laid to rest by the magic phrase "natural resources."[57] Mass-meetings here and there gave propulsion to the movement.[58] Candidates for State office were forced to make the maddest pledges. A grand demonstration was projected at Vandalia just ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... batteries for street cars, and that continued and substantial progress is being made in each successive case. The prejudices against the application of secondary batteries are being rapidly dispelled, and there are indications everywhere that this method of propulsion will soon take a recognized place among the great transit facilities in the United States. I feel convinced that this country will also in this respect be far ahead of Europe before another year has passed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various

... in this city Dec. 6, 1867, at the age of 67. A long and eminently useful although unobtrusive life entitles his memory to respect. He commenced his career as a mechanic in the steam engine establishment of James P. Allaire, soon after the application of steam for the propulsion of boats and long before its application to ships for the purposes of commerce or war. For fifty-two years, with the exception of one or two brief intervals, he was connected with the Allaire works in this city, and for more than ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... of the steamboat almost all earlier means of propulsion, natural and artificial, were used as models by the inventors. The fins of fishes, the webbed feet of amphibious birds, the paddles of the Indian, and the poles and oars of the riverman, were all imitated by the patient inventors struggling ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert

... another little idiosyncrasy of design that escaped us both until she was about ready to launch—there was no method of propulsion. Her sides were far too high to permit the use of sweeps, and when Perry suggested that we pole her, I remonstrated on the grounds that it would be a most undignified and awkward manner of sweeping down upon the foe, even if we could find or wield poles that would reach ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... conception of education the child is central. The child is interested in things. It wants first to sense them, or as Froebel would say "to make the outer inner"; it wants to play with them, to construct with them, and along the line of this inward propulsion the educational process has to act. The "thing-studies" if one may so term them, which have been introduced into the curriculum, such as gardening, manual training (with cardboard, wood, metal), cooking, painting, modelling, games ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... invariably starts on the difficult emprise of verse, and goes on to prose as by an afterthought. Why should men start upon the more difficult form and proceed to the easier? It is not their usual way. In learning to skate, for instance, they do not cut figures before practising loose and easy propulsion. ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... admit that at first I wasn't sure I was hearing those noises. It was in a park near the nuclear propulsion center—a cool, green spot, with the leaves all telling each other to hush, be quiet, and the soft breeze stirring them up again. I had known precisely such a secluded little green sanctuary just over the hill from Mr. Riordan's farm ...
— Houlihan's Equation • Walt Sheldon

... arms and legs alike do their share in the propulsion of the body, the legs perform by far the most important work, and the importance of a good "kick" cannot be too strongly urged. Though the action of the soles of the feet upon the water helps the "drive," the momentum is also given by the "wedge" ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... of years or so that they took the matter up, after a successful voyage made by the Archimedes, the first sea-going screw steamer. They then built a small craft called the Bee, fitted with both paddles and screw, to try which was the better means of propulsion. The screw had the best of it, and after the further experiment of building two vessels of the same size and power, the one with paddles the other with a screw, and finding the screw still superior, it was finally adopted as an ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... perfected in the usual slow course of invention, and could neither have been constructed nor propelled a hundred years ago, for neither was the metal of which they are constructed produced, nor had the method of propulsion or even the propulsive power been developed. Inventors had to wait till science had given us in abundance a metal less than a quarter the weight of iron, but as strong and durable, and this was not until some fifty years ago when a process was discovered for producing ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius

... brook; and will have noticed, how the little animal wins its way up against the stream, by alternate pulses of active and passive motion, now resisting the current, and now yielding to it in order to gather strength and a momentary fulcrum for a further propulsion. This is no unapt emblem of the mind's self-experience in the act of thinking. There are evidently two powers at work, which relatively to each other are active and passive; and this is not possible without an intermediate faculty, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... applying their wisdom and learning to the investigation of the origin of domestic and other implements and contrivances, inform us that the first boat was probably a log, on which the man sat astride, using a stick as a means of propulsion. In time the idea of hollowing the log occurred, Nature undoubtedly presenting the model and inviting the novice to squat inside. But what was the inhabitant of a certain island in the Gulf of Carpentaria to do since Nature failed to ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... is this mysterious force that we call electricity, which is flashing such light in our homes and through our streets as the world has never known before. The cars, loaded, are speeding along our highways with no visible means of propulsion. We step up to a little box, and put a shell to our ear, and speak and listen, and converse with a friend in Boston or Chicago, recognizing the voice perfectly, as though this friend were by our side. We send a message over a wire, under the deep, and talk ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... was just spitting on the hand. Practically it is so, but the Doctor says the spitting is accidental, a by-product I suppose. The method consists in taking the right hand in both yours, turning it palm upwards, bending your head low over it, and saying with great energy and a violent propulsion of ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... the helix, and the paddle-wheel constitute at present the means of propulsion that are exclusively employed when one has recourse to a motive power for effecting the propulsion of a boat. The sail constitutes an entirely different mode, and should not figure in our enumeration, considering the essentially variable character ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various

... or two would be very desirable; these instruments of propulsion do not appear, however, to have been used by the ancients. We first hear of a sail being employed at the time when Isis went in search of her husband Osiris, who was killed by his brother Typhon, and whose quarters were scattered in the Nile. This lady, it seems, took off the veil that ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... a veteran too—jolly old bus in its way, but too slow; it's a 'pusher', you see, and 'tractors' are all the go. We're having some over to-day—tophole machines." Here ensued much technical discussion between him and N. as to the relative merits of traction and propulsion. ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol

... his opinions in privacy and self-fondness for a long time, and seek for sympathy and love, not for detection or censure. Dismiss, my dear fellow, your theory of Collision of Ideas, and take up that of Mutual Propulsion. I wish to write more, and state to you a lucrative job, which would, I think, be eminently serviceable to your own mind, and which you would have every opportunity of doing here. I now express a serious wish that you would come and look out for a house. ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... who had long been working earnestly to solve the problem of electric economy, were beaten in the race, and a perfect system of stored electricity introduced and successfully applied to the propulsion of ships, patented by Professor Scotland Thomson, nephew of the late Sir William Thomson, ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone

... machinery, thus requiring motors, with their propellers, shafting, supplies, &c., weighing less than 20 lb. per h.p. It is evident that the apparatus must be designed to be as light as possible, and also to reduce to a minimum all resistances to propulsion. This being kept in view, the strength and consequent section required for each member may be calculated by the methods employed in proportioning bridges, with the difference that the support (from air pressure) will be considered as uniformly distributed, and the load as concentrated at one ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... attempt at propulsion by this method was that of a French locksmith named Besnier. Over two hundred years ago he made for himself a pair of light wooden paddles, with blades at either end, somewhat similar in shape to the double paddle of a canoe. These he placed over ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton

... railroad iron, set aslant like a gable roof, and heavily backed up with timber and cotton bales. Her whole bow formed a powerful ram; the shield, flat on the top, was pierced for ten guns of heavy calibre, three in each broadside, two forward, and two aft. Had her means of propulsion proved equal to her power of attack and defence, it is doubtful if the whole Union navy on the Mississippi could have stood against her single-handed. The situation thus strangely recalls that presented by the Merrimac, or Virginia, in Hampton Roads before the opportune arrival of the ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... (L'Annee Psychologique 1895, p. 204) that the propulsion of air from the elastic chamber and the rebound of the pen might interfere with the significance of the graphic record is more serious in connection with the application of this method to piano playing than here; since its imperfection, as that writer says, was due to the force and extreme ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... employed for the propulsion of screw vessels are divided into two great classes,—geared engines and direct acting engines; and each of these classes again has many varieties. In screw vessels, the shaft on which the screw is set requires to revolve at a much greater ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... be said to embrace all the engines now being manufactured in this country for the propulsion of steam vessels by the screw propeller. In their leading principles they also embrace nearly all paddle engines now being built, whether the cylinders be oscillating, fixed vertically, or inclined ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... upper reaches of the river; but every now and then we came on barges, laden with hay or other country produce, or carrying bricks, lime, timber, and the like, and these were going on their way without any means of propulsion visible to me—just a man at the tiller, with often a friend or two laughing and talking with him. Dick, seeing on one occasion this day, that I was looking rather hard on one of these, said: "That is one of our force-barges; it is quite as easy to work ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... first Dickinson propeller fitted to a sea-going vessel of this size, it is quite within the limits of possibility that the present results may be improved upon in further practice. In any case we can but regard this propeller as a distinct and original departure in marine propulsion, and we congratulate Mr. Dickinson on his present success and promising future. Messrs. Weatherley, Mead & Hussey also deserve credit for their discernment, and for the spirited manner in which they have taken up Mr. Dickinson's ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various

... or sense, is present in some mammals, but it is by no means so phenomenal as in some species of birds. In mammals it is individual rather than species-wide. Individual horses, dogs and cats have done wonderful things under the propulsion of the homing instinct, but that instinct is by no means general throughout those species. Among wild animals, exhibitions of the home-finding instinct are rare, but the annals of the Zoological Park contain one ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... of the performance, by trying to raise her before she has put her weight on his hands. Fifth, he may stand too far away from the side of the horse, in which case he is liable to throw her over to the off side of the horse (as happened once to me), by giving her an oblique instead of a vertical propulsion. A minor form of this mistake is attempting to put the lady on the saddle, instead of raising her to the height at which she can easily take her seat. After a lady has suffered from clumsy attempts to put her up, it is not to be wondered at if she regards the feat of mounting as one which requires ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... in the construction of the Machine which is here presented to the public view, is simply to illustrate and establish the fact, that, by a proper disposition of parts and the application of a sufficient power, it is possible to effectuate the propulsion or guidance of a Balloon through the air, and thus to prepare the way for the more perfect accomplishment of this most ...
— A Project for Flying - In Earnest at Last! • Robert Hardley

... illustrate the defect best by comparing the movements of the heel with those of the crank-pin of an engine. One serves as the lever by which the gastrocnemius helps to propel the body; the other serves the same purpose in the propulsion of a motor cycle. On referring to Fig. 7, A, the reader will see that the piston-rod and the crank-pin are in a straight line; in such a position the engine is powerless to move the crank-pin until ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent

... method of propulsion did away with the necessity of a large propellor such as most airships have to use, a propellor which must of necessity be very light ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood

... as a settled point that any recoil of the gun is just so much taken from the initial velocity of the ball, (and if any one doubts it, let him try the experiment of throwing a stone, and stepping backwards at the moment of propulsion,) it is obvious, that, for the attainment of the longest range, such a preponderance of weight in the gun over that of the projectile is necessary as to secure the least possible recoil, and this point seems to have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... valuable platinum in Siberia, Tom started for that lonely place, and, to reach a certain part of if, he had to invent a new machine, called an air glider. It was an aeroplane without means of propulsion save ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton

... automobile was practically unknown to the general public, but by the time the patent was issued everybody was familiar with self-propelled vehicles, and most of the men, including myself, who had been for years working on motor propulsion, were surprised to learn that what we had made practicable was covered by an application of years before, although the applicant had kept his idea merely as an idea. He had done nothing to put it ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... long slender ship of extremely low freeboard, rakish rigged as a single-master, both sails and oars being used as a means of propulsion; two small cannon were mounted forward, and a round dozen arquebuses were also carried. The total company and passengers of the three ships were only 110 ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole

... rocket base, they embarked in the Sea Hound, Tom's favorite model of his diving seacopter. A powerful central rotor with reversible-pitch blades, spun by atomic turbines, enabled the craft to rise through the air or descend into the deepest abysses of the ocean. Propulsion jets gave it ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton

... original Vanguard was the classic example of what we now call, somewhat facetiously I'm afraid, the hybrid propulsion system. It utilized chemical fuels throughout ... liquid oxygen and kerosene in the first stage, fuming nitric acid and unsymmetrical dimethyl-hydrazine in the second stage and an unknown form of solid propellant in ...
— If at First You Don't... • John Brudy

... which our young friend had been inducted, was all that could have been desired for the scion of a noble house, whose pampered whims and vices were to be ministered to by the lavish hand of a fond parent, and where the display of mental abilities was no more necessary than in the propulsion of the mechanism of one of Her Majesty's establishments erected for the ambulating exercises of petty delinquents, yet to a young and high-spirited nature, such as John Ferguson's, the very absence of any intellectual requirements in the performance ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... hair could by no means fail to guide a bit of machinery that wouldn't r'ar and run even if a newspaper blew across its face. He mounted the seat, on his first essay alone, with the jauntiness becoming a master of vehicular propulsion. There may have been in his secret heart a bit of trepidation, now that the instructor was not there. In fact, one of the assembled villagers who closely observed his demeanour related afterward that Star's face was froze and that he had hooked onto ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... these unique fliers are but rubber-like gas bags filled with the eighth Barsoomian ray, or ray of propulsion—that remarkable discovery of the Martians that has made possible the great fleets of mighty airships that render the red man of the outer world supreme. It is this ray which propels the inherent or reflected light of the planet off into ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... or woman in the street would sing loudly and passionately with such power and beauty that the impressionable Martians would follow the refrain of the song and the whole street for blocks and blocks would resound in waves of delightful melody. There are no mechanical modes of propulsion in the streets of the City of ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... twenty-five feet in length, twenty-six feet broad at the water-line, and five and one-third feet deep to the structural deck. The strength and safety of the hull are increased by five water-tight compartments. Propulsion is effected by a pair of modern stern paddle-wheel engines capable of being worked up to over two hundred and fifty horse power, giving her a speed of ten miles an hour. She has stateroom accommodation for twenty-two passengers, draws three and a half feet of water aft, and eats up half a ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... that Mr. Monck Mason (whose voyage from Dover to Weilburg in the balloon, "Nassau," occasioned so much excitement in 1837,) conceived the idea of employing the principle of the Archimedean screw for the purpose of propulsion through the air—rightly attributing the failure of Mr. Henson's scheme, and of Sir George Cayley's, to the interruption of surface in the independent vanes. He made the first public experiment at Willis's Rooms, but afterward removed his model to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... timber—not yet firmly lashed together—lay loose and loggish upon the water, and moved very slowly and irregularly under such ill-assorted propulsion: and, notwithstanding that the raft had obtained a hundred yards the start of the swimmers, its occupants began seriously to dread ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... to exercise their hearts. Narrow natures expand by persecuting as much as others through beneficence; they prove their power over their fellows by cruel tyranny as others do by loving kindness; they simply go the way their temperaments drive them. Add to this the propulsion of self-interest and you may read the enigma of ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac

... a table littered with papers, staring at the gigantic machine before him, Gregory Manning said slowly: "That thing simply has to adapt itself to spaceship drive. There's everything there that's needed for space propulsion. Unlimited power from a minimum of fuel. Split-second efficiency. Entire independence of any set condition, because the ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak

... touch, between nature and man. "I am much better," he writes, "and my new and tender health is all over me like a voluptuous feeling." And whatever fame, or charm, or life-inspiring gift he has had as a speculative thinker, is the vibration of the interest he excited then, the propulsion into years which clouded his early promise of that first buoyant, irresistible, self-assertion. So great is even the indirect power of a sincere effort towards the ideal life, of even a temporary escape of ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... the Songo rapids empty, while the baggage was carried along the bank. It was then stowed in the boats and having taken our places we made a start. The method of propulsion is very interesting to watch. The canoes are sixty or seventy feet long and three or four wide. In the centre is an awning to shade the white man and in front by the bows, a space is left about ten feet long in which three pole ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman

... tail, with an activity scarcely inferior. If there is anything worth while in accepted theories of the conversion and conservation of force these gigantic energies are by no means wasted; they appear as heat, light and electricity, modifying climate, reducing gas bills and assisting in propulsion of street cars. Even in baying the moon and insulting visitors and bypassers the dog releases a certain amount of vibratory force which through various mutations of its wave-length, may do its part in cooking a steak or gratifying the olfactory nerve by throwing fresh perfume on the ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce



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