"Chronometer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hold of, right out, I was walking down Leadenhall Street in the City of London, thinking of turning-to again, when I met what I call Smithick and Watersby of Liverpool. I chanced to lift up my eyes from looking in at a ship's chronometer in a window, and I saw him bearing ...
— The Wreck of the Golden Mary • Charles Dickens
... mind, and had he been less strongly individual he would have accepted the general opinion and given Herbert Spencer up. As it was, he found Spencer's explanation of things convincing; and, as he phrased it to himself, to give up Spencer would be equivalent to a navigator throwing the compass and chronometer overboard. So Martin went on into a thorough study of evolution, mastering more and more the subject himself, and being convinced by the corroborative testimony of a thousand independent writers. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... I had thought to bring Wolf Larsen's chronometer and sextant," I said, still gloomily. "Sailing one direction, drifting another direction, to say nothing of the set of the current in some third direction, makes a resultant which dead reckoning can never calculate. Before long we won't know where we ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... twelve o'clock. After luncheon, during which Holmes made several more cracks about the possible guilt of others in the diamond robbery, we adjourned to the library, and Holmes settled himself in the best chair, still wearing Luigi Vermicelli's light green livery, consulted his old chronometer ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... Davenport Hall in Cheshire, where they lived a quiet retired life, spending a good deal of their time with their friends Sir Charles and Lady Holte at Brereton. Edgeworth amused himself by making a clock for the steeple at Brereton, and a chronometer of a singular construction, which, he says,'I intended to present to the King ... to add to His Majesty's collection of uncommon clocks and watches which I ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... decently in my terrors, and, whatever should happen to my life, preserve my character: as the captain said, we are a queer kind of beasts. Breakfast-time came, and I made shift to swallow some hot tea. Then I must stagger below to take the time, reading the chronometer with dizzy eyes, and marvelling the while what value there could be in observations taken in a ship launched (as ours then was) like a missile among flying seas. The forenoon dragged on in a grinding monotony of peril; every spoke of the wheel ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Isaac Newton had called the attention of the British Government to the necessity for an accurate portable time-keeper at sea, to determine longitude, and in 1714 Parliament offered a reward of 20,000 pounds sterling for such a chronometer. Thenceforward for fifty years the inventive spirits of England and the Continent were secretly at work to produce a timepiece which would deserve the large reward, amongst them Charles Mason, who labored with such perfect discretion and uncommunicative self-reliance that none knew, none will ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... below. At 6.30 a.m. I thought I heard the sound of a steam-whistle. I dared not be certain, but I knew that the men at the whaling-station would be called from their beds about that time. Descending to the camp I told the others, and in intense excitement we watched the chronometer for seven o'clock, when the whalers would be summoned to work. Right to the minute the steam-whistle came to us, borne clearly on the wind across the intervening miles of rock and snow. Never had any one of us heard sweeter music. It was the first sound created by outside human agency that had ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... to your sleepy navigator, deacon; but the man who keeps his eyes open has little to fear. Had you given us a chronometer, there would not have been one-half the risk there will ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... felt pretty hot about it, for it smacked too much of setting a thief to catch a thief, or at least offsetting the pastor and me like the compensating idea of a ship's chronometer; but my wife liked the respectability it give us before the natives; and Tom said my resenting it would be like putting the cap on my head. So I acted like I didn't give a whoop, the one way ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... foundation. Within my recollection, it was deemed a necessary qualification for the master and the mate of a merchant-ship, and even for a prime hand, to be able to "work a lunar," as it was called. The improvements in the chronometer have in practice, to a great extent, superseded this laborious operation; but observation remains, and unquestionably will for ever remain, the only dependence for ascertaining the ship's time and deducting the longitude from the comparison of ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... all the stronger. What is to hinder Mr. Darwin from giving Paley's argument a further a-fortiori extension to the supposed case of a watch which sometimes produces better watches, and contrivances adapted to successive conditions, and so at length turns out a chronometer, a town clock, or a series of organisms of the same type? From certain incidental expressions at the close of the volume, taken in connection with the motto adopted from Whewell, we judge it probable that our author regards the whole system of Nature as one which had received ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... in Theory and Practice of the Lever, Cylinder and Chronometer Escapements, Together with a Brief Account of the Origin and Evolution ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... ready for blast-off," said Tom, and then turned to the logbook and jotted down the time in the ship's journal. The astral chronometer over the control board ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... to be a really splendid boat. We had only one sextant and two chronometers on board, but a chronometer journal was lacking. Luckily I found an 'Old Indian Ocean Directory' of 1882 on board; its information went back ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... use my chronometer," replied Captain Nemo. "If to-morrow, the 21st of March, the disc of the sun, allowing for refraction, is exactly cut by the northern horizon, it will show that I am at ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... sailed there is four minutes' difference of clock-time," Scott proceeded. "You know that a chronometer is a timepiece so nicely constructed and cared for, that it practically keeps perfect time. Meridians are imaginary great circles, and we are always on one of them. With our sextants we find when the centre of the sun is on the celestial meridian corresponding to the terrestrial one; and at ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... earth's surface and that of the port from which the ship sailed, or from some fixed place where the clock could be timed. The English government, seeing the importance of this, proposed the very large reward of L10,000 for the invention of a chronometer which would not lose more than a stated number of minutes during a year. This prize was won by John Harrison, and from this time onward a sea-captain with a minimum of astronomical knowledge was enabled to know his longitude within a few minutes. ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... meridian, and that the difference must be exactly proportional to the difference of longitude. So that a watch, which is right in one place, cannot, strictly speaking, be right in any other place, east or west of the first: and that, if the time of day, at two places, can be compared, either by taking a chronometer from one to another, or by observing some celestial phenomenon, like the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, and ascertaining precisely the time of their occurrence, according to the reckoning at both; the distances east or west, by degrees, may be determined. The reader will observe, too, that the ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... Besides his observation that "in going from London to Greenwich we must not go round by Inverness," he said, "We must not become too complicated with our machinery. Remember the get-at-ability of parts. If we go on as some mechanics are doing, we shall soon be boiling our eggs with a chronometer!" ...] that comes forth from our workshops, and merely show the mastery we possess over materials and mechanical forms. The original of this measuring machine of Maudslay's was exhibited at the Loan Collection at South Kensington ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... very cheap affair which I had won at a raffle. My visitor was deceiving me, though for what purpose I did not on the instant divine. No one would like to suspect him of having purloined his wife's tiara. Why should I not deceive him, and at the same time get rid of my poor chronometer for a sum that exceeded its value ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... only agreed with the owner a month ago nearly that I would take her at a certain sum per day, subject to divers conditions about being caulked (which is all she wants, I have ascertained), being provided with spare sails, spars, chronometer, boat, &c., and all agreement to be off unless by a certain day (already past) she was in a state satisfactory to Mr. Kerr. But there is, I fear, none other, and ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the chronometer, that is, a watch that can be trusted to keep a steady rate for long periods, was at this time completed by Harrison; but very few had been manufactured, and astronomers and sailors were slow to believe in the efficacy of this method of carrying time about with a ship. ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... a signal to speak us, and, on the Hudson's main-topsail being laid to the mast, he came down under our stern, and ranged up alongside to leeward. He proved to be a ship called the "London Packet," from Charlestown, bound to Havre, and his chronometer having stopped, he ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... at times, even when he was cross. And he was one of the best sailor-men that ever trod a deck. A chronometer watch, which was committed to the care of the writer ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... not what is called "an advanced thinker"; he is really the most extreme of reactionaries, because he wants to go back to the beginnings of civilization. He is willing to give up the chronometer and to return to ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... did not bring the interview, as one might have expected, to an abrupt end. The lamb, as the Abbe calls the doctor, trembling, stammered out an account of what he had seen. He explained how he had timed the passage of the black spot. 'Where is your chronometer?' asked Leverrier. 'It is this watch, the faithful companion of my professional journeys.' 'What! with that old watch, showing only minutes, dare you talk of estimating seconds. My suspicions are already ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... the bright surface, and in the next instant was thrust away into the dusk again. But that ship, that captain, and that pregnant instant had had their work appointed for them in the dawn of time and could not fail of the performance. The chronometer of God never errs!" ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... march may be about two and a half miles (direct geographical) from Axim, and five along the native path. During the night my companion took a good observation of Castor and Pollux, and with the aid of his chronometer laid down the position of the Apatim village at N. lat. 4 55' and W. long. (G.) 2 14' 2". Consequently the nearest point from Central Axim is 2,200 yards, and 200 from the shore. The north-western angle runs clean across the Ancobra River. [Footnote: ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... Y'Nor's bird-of-prey profile with detached interest as Y'Nor jerked his head around to glare again at the chronometer on the farther wall of ...
— The Helpful Hand of God • Tom Godwin
... the science of navigation. One measures the sun's height at meridian; looks at a chronometer; consults a book of mystical figures; makes a little slate work like a school-boy's problem; and he knows his position at sea. Twelve o'clock, if there be neither fog nor cloud, is the most important hour of a nautical day. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... to the Yorkshireman John Harrison, a carpenter and son of a carpenter, who had a genius for clockmaking, and was stimulated to work at the construction of marine chronometers by living in sight of the sea. He came to London in 1728, and after fifty years of labour finished in 1759 a chronometer which, having stood the test of two voyages, obtained for him the offered reward of L20,000. Harrison died in 1776 at the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... merely the least imperfect time-piece man has devised, makes possible the surest and easiest method by far of ascertaining longitude. Yet the Pilgrim sailed in a day when the chronometer was just coming into general use. So little was it depended upon that the Pilgrim carried only one, and that one, going wrong at the outset, was never used again. A navigator of the present would be aghast if asked to voyage for two years, from Boston, around the Horn to California, and ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... answered the Master, glancing at the chronometer that hung beside the air-rules. "Time enough to get settled, later. Every second counts, now. We're due to start in seven minutes, you know. Rrisa will attend to all this. We three have got to be getting forward to ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... gain some knowledge of the coming weather, Then stared and took out his chronometer, Remarking it was funny altogether; He rang the bell in order to know whether His daughters really had begun to dress, And Julia, quite as light as any feather, Swept in and pertly answered, "Yes, Sir, yes," Much to his ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... Statesmen, and all their whole lineage, For aught that I care, you may knock them to spinage; But think, DICK, their Cooks—what a loss to mankind! What a void in the world would their art leave behind! Their chronometer spits—their intense salamanders— Their ovens—their pots, that can soften old ganders, All vanisht for ever,—their miracles o'er, And the Marmite Perpetuelle bubbling no more! Forbid it, forbid ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... man in God's likeness has a bodily form, some have presumed to infer backwards therefrom that God also has a bodily form like to man, which is related by way of prototype to the human form." [125] As well might we say that because a watchmaker constructs a chronometer with a movement somewhat like that of his own heart, therefore he is mechanical, metallic, and round. Against this anthropomorphic materialism science lifts up its voice; for what modern philosopher, worthy of the name, fails to distinguish ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... the lower as gradually darkening. It was one of Peggy's inherited treasures, and she reverenced it next to her Bible. The glass had been broken and mended with putty, which formed a dark, diagonal line across the venerable crystal. This antique chronometer occupied the central place on the mantel-piece, its gliding sands, though voiceless, for ever whispering of ebbing time and everlasting peace. "Passing away, passing away," seemed continually issuing from each meeting ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... evening-time; but this we know, that when the day of immortality breaks, the last vestige of earth's shadows will for ever flee away. To the closing hour of time, Providence may be to him a baffling enigma: but ere the first hour has struck on heaven's chronometer, all will be clear. My soul! "in God's light thou shalt see light;" the Book of His decrees is a sealed book now,—"A great deep" is all the explanation thou canst often give to His judgments; the why and the wherefore He seems to keep from us, to test our faith, to discipline us in ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... his extreme closeness defeated its own object. He once lost seventy thousand dollars by committing a piece of petty injustice toward his best captain. This gallant sailor, being notified by an insurance office of the necessity of having a chronometer on board his ship, spoke to Mr. Astor on the subject, who advised the captain to ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... happened, however, that the fleet was blown off the coast by a strong north-east wind, which lasted more than a week. During this the ships, by chasing and performing various evolutions, had lost the reckoning, which differed from the true position by the chronometer of the Hibernia, which happened to be the only one in the fleet. After the easterly wind, a heavy westerly gale came on; and before Ushant could be made, the weather became thick, and the signal was made ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... meeting of the waters. They generally passed us in about three quarters of an hour, when everything became comparatively smooth again. No observation to-day for latitude, but by computation we are in latitude 5.25 N. and longitude (chronometer) 42.19 W. Current east by north 58 miles. So curious were the phenomena of the lips that the officers and men came on deck upon ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... When that chronometer, which was surmounted by a cheerful brass group of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, tolled five in a heavy cathedral tone, Mr. Osborne pulled the bell at his right hand—violently, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the Channel, and the backers of daylight had almost given up hope; but it dropped in the late afternoon, and by the log we were evidently in for a close finish. Mr. Olstein had set his watch by the ship's chronometer, and consulted it from minute to minute. He stood by me, binocular in hand, and grew paler with excitement as sunset drew on and the minutes scored off the guesses one by one from the list. His guess was among the last, but not actually the last by ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... be no longer duped by them, and told the servant of Haj Beshir that I would start to-day, be the consequence what it might. So off I went to the Shereef, and told him I must go at once, to follow the Kashalla, who had taken away the box in which was the chronometer, and I must go to wind it up early in the morning. He immediately informed the Sarkee, and asked for a soldier. A soldier was forthwith brought, and a message from the Sarkee, that the horse which had been sent ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... sprang below, followed by Fred and Tom Singleton, who secured the charts, a compass, chronometer, and quadrant; also the log-book and the various journals and records of the voyage. Captain Ellice also did active service, and being cool and self-possessed he recollected and secured several articles which were afterwards of the greatest use, and which, but for him, would in such ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... "Bless my chronometer! That will delay things," said the odd man with a sigh. "But I suppose there is no hope for it," and he proceeded to open the box, while Tom, Ned, the circus man and Eradicate busied themselves over the hundred and one things ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... the rocks, and as soon as we were near enough I caught up the rope, made the leap, and threw the bight over a projection, where I held the boat while Jack and Jones bailed rapidly and set things in order so that we could go to the assistance of the Canonita. The Major's Jurgenssen chronometer had stopped at 8:26:30 from ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... theodolite by Ramsden, and Kater's pocket compass [Note: A most valuable instrument, combining all the advantages of the circumferentor, without being so liable to be damaged and put out of order by carriage.], with the addition of an excellent sextant, pocket chronometer, and artificial horizon. I have to lament that our mountain barometers were broken at an early stage of the expedition; the height however of some principal points had been previously obtained, and is marked on the chart; these in two instances were ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... frequently cast them off from my feet in my botanical investigations, without having time to pick them up, when threatened by the approach of lions, men, or hyenas. My excellent watch, owing to the short duration of my movements, was also on these occasions an admirable chronometer. I wanted, besides, a sextant, a few philosophical instruments, and some books. To purchase these things, I made several unwilling journeys to London and Paris, choosing a time when I could be hid by the favouring clouds. As all my ill-gotten gold was exhausted, I carried over ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... Cephei, and ΒΆ delta Cygni, until after a period of 12,000 years, Vega in Lyra will shine forth as the brightest of all possible pole stars. These data give us some idea of the extent of the motions which, divided into infinitely small portions of time, proceed without intermission in the great chronometer of the universe. If for a moment we could yield to the power of fancy, and imagine the acuteness of our visual organs to be made equal with the extremest bounds of telescopic vision, and bring together that ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the description of a dial presented to him by a friend who had picked it "out of a deal of old iron," and which he supposes to be such a one as the "fool i' the forest" drew from his poke, and looked on with lacklustre eye. It is very probable that this species of chronometer is still in common use in the sister kingdom; for my brother mentions to me that, when at school in Ireland some fifteen or sixteen years since, he had seen one of those "ring-dials" in the possession of one of his schoolfellows: and Mr. Carleton, in his amusing ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... suddenly changed its character. Certain rumours had reached headquarters, and the Emperor Nicholas appointed as colonel a stern disciplinarian of German origin, who aimed at making the regiment a kind of machine that should work with the accuracy of a chronometer. ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... should be left to tell his own story. "At the height of 18,844 feet 18 vibrations of a horizontal magnet occupied 26.8 seconds, and at the same height my pulse beat at the rate of 100 pulsations per minute. At 19,415 feet palpitation of the heart became perceptible, the beating of the chronometer seemed very loud, and my breathing became affected. At 19,435 feet my pulse had accelerated, and it was with increasing difficulty that I could read the instruments; the palpitation of the heart was very perceptible; the hands and lips assumed a dark bluish colour, but not the face. At 20,238 ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... strong, and the channel so full of large boulder stones, that the men were frequently up to the waist in ice-cold water whilst lifting or launching the boat over these impediments. Their landing-place was found to be in latitude 66 deg. 32' 1" north. The rate of the chronometer had become so irregular that it could not be depended upon for finding the longitude, and during the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and seek that of the Cryptic's commander. And he telegraphed as clearly as Moorshed was speaking: "My dear friend and brother officer, I know Panke; you know Panke; we know Panke—good little Panke! In less than three Greenwich chronometer seconds Panke will make an enormous ass of himself, and I shall have to put things straight, unless you who are a man of tact ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... recognized all those people instantly. That tall, stout old man in the overcoat and forage-cap with a cockade—was the police captain, Mihail Makarovitch. And that "consumptive-looking" trim dandy, "who always has such polished boots"—that was the deputy prosecutor. "He has a chronometer worth four hundred roubles; he showed it to me." And that small young man in spectacles.... Mitya forgot his surname though he knew him, had seen him: he was the "investigating lawyer," from the "school of jurisprudence," who had only lately come to the town. ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... system as a lone spaceship stood poised on the starting ramp, her ports closed, her crew making last-minute preparations. Ringing the huge spaceport, crews from other ships paused in their work to watch the first vessel make the dash around the Moon in a frantic race against the astral chronometer. In the temporary grandstands at the north end of the field, thousands of spectators from cities all over Earth ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... in the Pitt Place document. At about twelve o'clock, midnight, the valet rushed in among the guests, who were discussing the odd circumstances, and said that his master was at the point of death. Lord Lyttelton had kept looking at his watch, and at a quarter past twelve (by his chronometer and his valet's) he remarked, 'This mysterious lady is not a true prophetess, I find.' The real hour was then a quarter to twelve. At about half-past twelve, by HIS watch, twelve by the real time, he asked for his physic. ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... Though no mortal oversaw the thief at his task, the eye of science was in that cell and watched every stroke and her inexorable finger marked it down. In plain English, on the face of the machine was a thing like a chronometer with numbers set all round and a hand which, somehow or other, always pointed to the exact number of turns the thief had made. The crank was an autometer, or self-measurer, and in that respect your superior ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... until that moment that he realized that he was completely naked. He had been stripped of everything, including the chronometer on ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... image grew larger and larger, anxious eyes swiveled back and forth from the scanner screen to the steady sweeping hand of the chronometer. Roger bit his lip ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... been about a quarter of an hour on deck, when the sun, which had not shown itself for two days, gleamed through the clouds. Newton, who was officer of the watch, and had been accustomed, when with Mr Berecroft, to work a chronometer, interrupted the captain, who was leaning on the carronade, talking to ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat |
