"Optical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the Channel Tunnel; A Town of Dwarfs; Whooping Cough; British Association Notes; An English Crop; Influence of White Colors; An Involved Accident; An Old Aqueduct System; Galvanism Cannot Restore Exhausted Vitality; Curious Optical Experiments; Ice Machines; American Antiquities; Protection from Lightning; Steam Machinery and Privateering; Man and Animals; The Limbs of Whales; Our Educational Standing; Surface Markings; The Oldest Stone Tools; Origin of the Spanish People; The English Meteorite; The Boomerang; A ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... which science had taught him 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 ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... best 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, ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... can there possibly be? Everything is above-board. Your eyes were open, I suppose, and you saw me change into all these things? If that is not enough for you, if you think it is a fraud, an optical illusion, I will turn into fire again, and you can touch me with your hand, my sagacious friend. You will then be able to conclude whether I am only visible fire, or have the ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... back-window that gave on the whitewashed wall—a man was rapidly putting his signature to a number of papers. But Mr. Slosson had ignored the existence of this man, treating him apparently as a figment of the disordered brain or as an optical illusion. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... in its harmony of parts, is perfect in its mathematical proportions, and beautiful in its geometrical designs. And yet each creation, each form, and each combination of forms, are produced by the same little pieces of glass; and all of them, in reality, are optical illusions; i.e., natural phenomena, which deceive the physical senses. So it ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... reverberating roar, and Lane clutched at a piece of the rock, and closed his eyes, feeling that all was over, but opened them again directly to see that the bridge before him was not undulating, and he knew that it was an optical illusion due to the heat and the giddiness ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... that within a circus or square of a diameter not less than six hundred and fifty-eight feet. This size of space will give the spectator an opportunity of viewing the erection at double the distance of its elevation, which is the optical distance that pictures, statues, and buildings should ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... reflection of the sun, ripplings occasioned by the meeting of two opposite currents, whales asleep upon the surface of the water, shoals of fish, fog-banks, and the extraordinary effect of mirage, than which, as an optical illusion, nothing is more deceiving, have doubtless given birth to many of these non-existing shoals and islands. Were charts to be published (one does exist in manuscript, in the Hydrographical Office at the Admiralty) with all the islands and dangers laid down that have been reported ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... access of enormous quantities of information. Technologies that will enable this include computational hardware advances such as increasingly powerful workstations, reduced-cost image generators, massively parallel machines, compact displays, reduced-cost memory devices (i.e., DRAM, RAID, and optical jukeboxes) client/server-specific database engines, reconfigurable simulation cells, "wearable" PCs, advanced human-computer interface (HCI) techniques (i.e., voice interfaces and those coming to ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... us quivered and danced, in the noon-day heat and mid-air, the green heights of New Jersey; and by an optical delusion, the blue sea seemed to ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... else in the known Galaxy. The molecules are huge; they can be seen with an ordinary optical microscope, and a microscopically visible molecule is a curious-looking object, to say the least. They use the stuff to treat fabric for protective garments. It isn't anything like collapsium, of course, but a suit of waxed coveralls weighing ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... 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 of Drums. Sacred cypress-tree. Oculan. Change of climate. ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... switched voice network of the Defense Communications System (US Department of Defense). Eutelsat - European 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 a coded pulse of light. GSM - a global system for mobile (cellular) communications devised by the Groupe Special Mobile of the pan-European standardization organization, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... food and beverages; electricity, gas, coke, oil, nuclear fuel; chemicals and manmade fibers; machinery; paper and printing; earthenware and ceramics; transport vehicles; textiles; electrical and optical apparatus; ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... meteor, shines only while his motion continues; the moments of rest and of obscurity are the same." What is this art of meditation, but the power of withdrawing ourselves from the world, to view that world moving within ourselves, while we are in repose? As the artist, by an optical instrument, reflects and concentrates the boundless landscape around him, and patiently traces all nature in that ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... were the double-series potentiometers actuating the variable-speed drives of the flight-angle directors in the hour and declination ranges; before his eyes was the finely marked micrometer screen upon which the guiding goniometer threw its needle-point of light; powerful optical systems of prisms and lenses revealed to his sight the director-angles, down to fractional seconds of arc. It was the task of the chief pilot to hold the screened image of the cross-hairs of the two directors in such position relative to the ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... stomach of 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 ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... north 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 ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... But, as against this, I'm bound to admit that at any moment I could probably have exorcised them both by asking my doctor for a prescription, or my oculist for a pair of spectacles. Only, as I never could make up my mind whether to go to the doctor or the oculist—whether I was afflicted by an optical or a digestive delusion—I left them to pursue their interesting double life, though at times they ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... is not denied," he says, "that there is a portion of extension which to the naked eye appears an indivisible point; it has been called by philosophers the minimum visibile. This minimum we can indefinitely magnify by means of optical instruments, making visible the still smaller parts which compose it. In each successive experiment there is still a minimum visibile, anything less than which cannot be discovered with that instrument, but can with one of a higher power. Suppose, now, that as we increase the magnifying ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... admirations. It isn't merely that I don't so clearly see how they are doing it, though that may certainly be a help; it is far more a matter of taste. As a writer I belong to one school and as a reader to another—as a man may like to make optical instruments and collect old china. Swift, Sterne, Jane Austen, Thackeray and the Dickens of Bleak House were the idols of my youthful imitation, but the contemporaries of my early praises were Joseph Conrad, W.H. Hudson, and Stephen Crane, ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... artificial light makes it superior to natural light in many ways. In fact, uses have been made of artificial light which are impossible with natural light. Light-sources may be made of a vast variety of shapes, and those may be transported wherever desired. They may be equipped with reflectors and other optical devices to direct or to diffuse the light ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... 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 star. But thirdly, it is certain, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... distinctness, but it will not present them in their natural size, for it can not change the angle of vision. The villages upon the table-land were apparently pigmy villages, inhabited by pigmy men and pigmy women, surrounded with pigmy cattle, and garrisoned by pigmy soldiery. It is, by an optical illusion, Liliput in real life. Had the English satirist placed himself where we now stood, he would have more than realized the picture which his fancy painted. He might have seen the marshaled hosts of Liliput marching ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... 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 ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... silence, with the light beating full on its smiling, dead face, and also on a deep wound just above his heart, from which the blood oozed redly, staining the grass on which he lay. Mastering the sick horror which seized me at this sight, I sprung forward—the shadow vanished instantly—it was a mere optical delusion, the result of my overwrought and excited condition. I shuddered involuntarily at the image my own heated fancy had conjured up; should I always see Guido thus, I thought, even ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... 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
... rising of the whole constellation of Orion from the horizon to the perpendicular position, and his ride through the heavens with his belt, his nebulous sword, and his four corner stars of the first magnitude, are sources of delight which never tire. Even the optical delusion, by which the motion of the earth from west to east appears to the eye as the movement of the whole firmament from east to west, swells the conception of magnificence to the ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... 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 ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... this. Close at hand were stupendous cliffs of pure obsidian—the black bottle glass manufactured in Nature's furnaces. Even half a mile of our road was macadamised with it. And so similar not only in chemical composition but in optical properties is this obsidian to actual glass, that a flat piece I picked up on the road, just after it had been splintered off a block by one of the wheels of our carriage, is as transparent as any piece of black bottle glass of equal thickness. These mountains of obsidian plainly tell how awfully ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... between man and man. Here was a brawny inhabitant of rural fields, leading the healthiest of lives, not conscious of the faculty we call imagination, stricken down almost to Death's door by his fright at an optical illusion, explicable, if examined, by the same simple causes which had impressed me the night before with a moment's belief in a sound and a spectre,—me who, thanks to sublime education, went so quietly to sleep a few minutes after, convinced ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 person take ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... impressionists, though the word "plein-airist" - luminist - has been chosen sometimes by them and by their admirers. The neo-impressionists in pictorial principle do not differ from the impressionist. Their technical procedure is different, and based on an optical law which proves that pure primary colours, put alongside of each other in alternating small quantities, will give, at a certain distance, a freshness and sparkle of atmosphere not attained by the earlier technical methods of the impressionistic school, which does not in the putting on ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... these quantities are large, as in general they are, they deter manufacturers from making experiments, and thus impede improvements both in the mode of conducting the processes and in the introduction of new materials. Difficulties of this nature have occurred in experimenting upon glass for optical purposes; but in this case, permission has been obtained by fit persons to make experiments, without the interference of the excise. It ought, however, to be remembered, that such permission, if frequently or indiscriminately granted, might be abused: the greatest protection against such ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... 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 and living, ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... 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 ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... other little odd matters (combined with the weak voice of the speaker), impressed me with the idea of having intruded into the chamber of some sick member of the crew. Emboldened by this notion, and by perceiving that the curtains were drawn closely around the bed, so that the inmate could have optical discernment of nothing that occurred without, I could not resist taking two soft steps to the table, and quietly removing a weapon whose bright face seemed to invite me as a long known and long ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 fulness is in one place alone. It is in such ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... 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, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... many hundred times in a 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... 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
... said, pettishly; "I don't think that the harbor-master is a spirit or a sprite or a hobgoblin, or any sort of damned rot. Neither do I believe it to be an optical illusion." ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... got the thing, not until he touched it quite persuaded he was not the victim of an optical hallucination. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... entering as Bilham withdrew. She had apparently put him a question, to which he had replied by turning to indicate his late interlocutor; toward whom, after an interrogation further aided by a resort to that optical machinery which seemed, like her other ornaments, curious and archaic, the genial lady, suggesting more than ever for her fellow guest the old French print, the historic portrait, directed herself with an intention that Strether instantly met. He knew in ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... student of the microscope who wishes to gain a thorough understanding of its principles and possibilities and its defects, and every user of the instrument who desires a work of reference to which he may turn for an explanation of some unexplained optical phenomenon, or for particulars of up-to-date apparatus, to procure a copy of Mr Spitta's ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... Christine Vulpius, it is certain that, although not an intellectual woman, she was not without some taste for pursuits in consonance with those of Goethe. It was for her that he wrote the "Metamorphoses of Plants," and in her company he pursued his optical and botanical researches. Had she shown no comprehension of these things, assuredly Goethe would never have persisted in instructing her in them. It was for her, too, that he wrote the "Roman Elegies," which shows that he did not esteem her a ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... used 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
... "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 we are ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... and his old square jaw of its old fierce form) looking defiantly at Dolby as if Dolby had contradicted him; and then trailed off into a weak pale likeness of himself as if his whole appearance had been some clever optical illusion. ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... This extraordinary optical illusion was the dawn opening on the coast, then actually ten miles away, and in a very few minutes, as the cloud lifted, the land seemed to rush off to its proper distance, until at last the curtain split in two, and I found ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... batteries, forts and other positions a violent fusillade greeted it. There was firing from the streets, windows, courts and roofs. I followed it through my field glass, and for a moment I thought it had been hit, for it paused in its flight. But this was an optical illusion.... The plane simply flew higher, having without doubt heard the sound of the fusillade and the bullets having perhaps whistled too close to the pilot's ears. When he was almost over my post, a light white cloud appeared under its wings and, in the ten ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... 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." ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... emphasize the design of speed under steam, and the use of sails with a fresh, fair wind only; a distinct, if partial, abandonment of the "auxiliary" steam reliance which so far had governed naval development. It may be added that the shorter and lighter masts, by a common optical effect, increased the impression of the vessel's length and swiftness, as was the case with the old-time sailing-frigate when her lofty topgallant-masts ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... 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
... direction, and if he deviates from that direction, the want of symmetry in the change of perspective on either side of the point on which he wishes to walk, will warn him of his error. The appreciation of this optical effect grows easily into a habit. When the more distant view happens to be shut out, the traveller must regain his line under guidance similar to that by which a sailor steers who only looks at his compass at intervals—I mean by the aspect of the sky, the direction of the wind, ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... Optical tests can be conducted by securing an ordinary letter chart such as is used by oculists and opticians. Seat the subject twenty feet away. If he can read all the lines of letters from the largest down to the smallest his eyesight is practically perfect. In a large percentage of cases ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... remains inactive, the influence she exercises on general politics by her mere extent, and the mysterious power which seems to be the corollary of it, far exceeds her actual strength. On her descending into the arena, however, this optical illusion is dissipated, as was apparent in the recent Turkish War; her prestige was lessened. No steps will therefore be taken by her to increase England's difficulties by which she gains much without striking ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... that she should distinguish truth from falsehood unerringly, that, in fact, she should follow the example of the scientist, who takes account of every minute particle of matter, every elementary and embryonic form of life, but eliminates all optical delusions, all the confusion which impurities and foreign substances might introduce into the search for truth. To achieve such an attitude long practise is necessary, and a wide observation of life under the guidance of the ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... logically, so 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 rather ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... at the distance of a mile, with the sun shining upon the bright river Nile in the foreground, and its appearance upon close inspection, was equal to the difference in the scenery of a theatre as regarded from the boxes or from the stage. Even that painful exposure of an optical illusion would be trifling compared with the imposture of Khartoum. The sense of sight had been deceived by distance, but the sense of smell was outraged by innumerable nuisances, when we set foot within ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... specialty machinery, connectors for audio and video, parts for motor vehicles, dental products, hardware, prepared foodstuffs, electronic equipment, optical products ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... 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
... or two, and that window that you say you saw to-day has got very much on my nerves. I've been imagining that it's a heliograph from an enemy encampment. Simply nerves, of course; but nerves ought not to account for extraordinary optical ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... posteriori, that is to say, because they exist. It is what M. Bayle acknowledges; and he ought to content himself with that, and not claim that one must put an end to the false appearances which are contrary thereto. It is as if one asked that there should be no more dreams or optical illusions. ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... suffers almost a spiritual change and exaltation under the effect of Bengal lights.]; whilst all around ourselves, that formed a centre of light, the darkness gathered on the rear and flanks in massy blackness: these optical splendours, together with the prodigious enthusiasm of the people, composed a picture at once scenical and affecting, theatrical and holy. As we staid for three or four minutes, I alighted; and immediately from a dismantled stall in the street, where no doubt ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... catch less wind than we; and then, so silent the steady march of all, we seem to be drifting up-stream, until on glancing at the shore the hills appear to be swiftly going down and the willow fringes up,—until the sight makes us dizzy, and we are content to be at quits with these optical delusions. ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... "early in March" (exact day not given), magnificence of outside corresponding to grandiosity of faculty and idea, Belleisle, we shall find, does practically set off towards Germany;—like a kind of French Belus, or God of the Sun; capable to dazzle weak German Courts, by optical machinery, and to set much rotten ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the 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 ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... 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
... 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
... lend to them almost the quality of a perpetual rejuvenescence. This may be an illusion, but it tells us of the primary intensity of the painter's vision. Withal, there is no scene of the merely spectral, no optical trickery. The waves of light are magnetic. The picture floats in space, seemingly compelled by its frame into limits. Gustave Geffroy once wrote that, in common with the great masters, Carriere, on his ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... algae. The body is pyriform, with the shell opening at the larger end. The chitinous shell is hyaline and plastic to a slight extent, so that the body is capable of some change in shape. The shell is thin and turned inwards at the mouth-opening, forming a tube (seen in optical section in fig. 4) through which the protoplasm passes to the outside. The walls of this tube are thicker than the rest of the shell, and in optical section the effect is that of two hyaline bars extending into the body protoplasm. A thin layer of protoplasm surrounds the shell and fine, ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... "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 ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... may sometimes safely be left, and are left, by the great workmen in their large works, to be corrected by the kind of bloom which the distance of thirty or forty feet sheds over them. I say, "sometimes," because this optical effect is a very subtle one, and seems to take place chiefly on certain colors, dead fresco colors especially; also the practice of the great workmen is very different, and seems much to be regulated by the time at their disposal. Tintoret's picture of Paradise, with 500 figures in it, adapted ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... presents examples of the most extraordinary refinements in order to correct optical illusions. The delicacy and subtlety of these are extreme, but there can be no manner of doubt that they existed. The best known correction is the diminution in diameter or taper, and the entasis or convex curve of the tapered outline of the shaft of ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... ground, surrounded with the customary astrological signs, the invocation commenced, the spirit appeared, and Plotinus stood face to face with his own soul. In this successful experiment it is needless to inquire how much the necromancer depended upon optical contrivances, and how much upon an alarmed imagination. But if thus the spirit of a living man could be called up, how much more likely the souls of ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... or else rush through and take wing on the opposite side. 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 acorns, sometimes forget their usual caution; and, walking slowly, I have ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... 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 of the craft, by Faraday. In the Journal of the Royal Institute of ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... 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 ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... wheels, and set in motion by a heavy weight, has also, on some occasions, been employed in chemical processes, to keep a solution in a state of agitation. Another object to which a similar apparatus may be applied, is the polishing of small specimens of minerals for optical experiments. ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... degrees, versed in the physical and natural sciences. Not only are they familiar with theories and authorities, but again they have a personal knowledge of facts and things. Voltaire[3108] is among the first to explain the optical and astronomical theories of Newton, and again to make calculations, observations and experiments of his own. He writes memoirs for the Academy of Sciences "On the Measure of Motive Forces," and "On the Nature and Diffusion of Heat." He handles Reamur's thermometer, Newton's prism, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... wholly or in part from elements extracted from her senseless body. So far, Geley's experiments throw a strong explanatory light upon those of Crookes. And here the Spiritualist must, as it seems to me, be prepared to meet an objection more formidable than the absurd ones of fraud or optical delusion. It is this. If the body of Katie King the spirit is derived from the body of Florrie Cook the psychic, then what assurance have we that the life therein is not really one of the personalities out of which the complex being named Florrie Cook ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement. Let this process go on for millions of years, and during each year on millions of individuals of many kinds; and may we not believe that a living optical instrument might be thus formed as superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to those ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... of an adjacent hill; then gradually this cloud became more dense and assumed a human shape. Oh! with what interest—what deep, enthusiastic interest, did Fernand contemplate the spectacle; for his well-stored mind at once suggested to him that he was now the witness of that wondrous optical delusion, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... 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 ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... just as the brass meridian encompasses a terrestrial globe. The resplendency of its light enchanted them, its pure softness delighted them, its perfect regularity astonished them. What was it? they asked Barbican. In a few words he explained it. The beautiful luminous ring was simply an optical illusion, produced by the refraction of the terrestrial atmosphere. All the stars in the neighborhood of the Earth, and many actually behind it, had their rays refracted, diffused, radiated, and finally converged ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... walls of which, 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. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... 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 Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... the box. There could be no doubt about it; the noise was louder. And, if I could trust my eyes, the box was moving—giving a series of little jumps. This might have been an optical delusion, but it seemed to me that at each tick the box gave a little bound. During the screeches—which sounded more like the cries of an animal in an agony of pain even than before—if it did not tilt itself first on one end, and then on another, I shall ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... 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. Beneath it swept a wide blue river, and on ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... 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 of his thoughts and led him to believe that he must ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... to the properties of light itself, it would appear that we cannot hope to be able to perceive objects which are much less than 1/100000 of an inch in diameter. Our microscopes may, no doubt, be improved, but the limitation lies not in the imperfection of our optical appliances, but in the nature of ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... Cambridge in 1666 his attention was occupied with optical discoveries; but he had no sooner brought them to a close than his mind reverted to the great subject of the planetary motions. Upon the death of Oldenburg in August, 1678, Dr. Hooke was appointed secretary to the Royal ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... quartz that strewed the sand, and by its quaint weathering—one rock exactly resembled a sitting eagle; a second was a turtle, and a third showed a sphinx in the rough. The Bad plain is backed by a curtain so tall that we seemed, by a common optical delusion, to be descending when we were ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... slope inward and so do the principal surfaces of the building, while the anta-capitals slope forward. These refinements, or some of them, have been observed in several other buildings. They are commonly regarded as designed to obviate certain optical illusions supposed to arise in their absence. But perhaps, as one writer has suggested, their principal office was to save the building from an appearance of mathematical rigidity, to give it something of the semblance of a ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... for creative work of this sort has 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 methods came in when human intelligence appeared upon the ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... 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 risk ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... 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
... "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 color does ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... the real facts, avoiding the optical illusion that makes things in our immediate {2} vicinity look larger, we shall form a quite different opinion. It is beyond all dispute that Rome found the point of support of its military power ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... first come in sight Comets have generally no tail; it grows as they approach the Sun, from which it always points away. It is no mere optical illusion; but while the Comet as a whole is attracted by the Sun, the tail, how or why we know not, is repelled. When once driven off, moreover, the attraction of the Comet is not sufficient to recall it, and hence perhaps so many Comets have now ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... nor 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
... war will see the use of a great quantity of new aids to war, bicycles, pigeons, telegraph, telephones, optical instruments and photographic instruments for the purpose of mapping from a great distance the positions occupied by the enemy and means to observe the movements of the enemy such as observing ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... 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 ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... 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 of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... princes of science are so 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 ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... moment, was all he saw. But he looked again, and the face and person seemed gradually to grow less strange; to change as he looked, to subside and soften into lineaments that were familiar, until at last they resolved themselves, as if by some strange optical illusion, into those of one whom he had known for many years, and forgotten and lost sight of for nearly as ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... from optical evidence, that J. Augustus Redell was a gambler. He admired Redell's genius for business, the soundness of his decisions, the alertness of his mind and the brilliance of his financial coups, ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... the origin of what we call the sensation of light. But the sensation is generally a compound one, and when all wave lengths which are competent to affect the retina are present, the compound effect we call white or whiteness. When some of the rays are absent, as, for instance, the longer ones, the optical effect is one we call green or greenness; and the special physiological mechanism for producing the sensation may be either three special sets of nerves, capable of sympathetic vibration to waves of about 1-39,000, 1-45,000, and 1-55,000 of an inch in length, as Helmholtz ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... 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 both windows, too. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... private supplicant, while he is publicly a liberal subscriber to a person he never saw—by leaving his vis-a-vis at the door of a well-known courtesan, in order to have the credit of an intrigue—in making use of an optical glass for personal inspection, though he can ascertain the horizon without any—by being or seeming to be, every thing that is in opposition to nature and virtue—in counting the lines in the Red Book, and carefully watching the importation of figurantes ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... can 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 ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... it was difficult to detect the exact outline of the ship, for the clear lux metal was practically invisible and the foot of it that surrounded the more visible part of the ship gave a curious optical illusion. The perfect reflecting ability of the relux made the inner hull difficult to see, too. It was more by absence than presence that one detected it; it blotted ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... 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. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... eh, 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 ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... about by itself as great a difference of view as 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 simple ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... 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 of the complaint, and is now in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... mask, as in the foregoing example; it may be simply circular, to suggest that the scene is viewed through a telescope; or a mask with hair-line bars, which will suggest that you are looking through a window. We examined a script a short while ago in which a travelling salesman for an optical goods house amused himself in the interval before train time by watching through a pair of binoculars the street below and the buildings opposite his hotel window. The scene enacted in an office of a building not far away led him to believe that a murder was being ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... argue with Bly that he had had an attack of blind staggers, and that the dog was only an optical delusion; but he could in no way convince him that it was not a reality, and that ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... integrity, and from so many different parts of the world, that the objectors were at last compelled to abandon the position they had occupied. Then a new theory was started, viz. that the lines were actually seen but did not actually exist, being really optical illusions arising from the apparent integration, or running together in linear form, of various small disconnected markings which were viewed from beyond the ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... we can 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 ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... which he had entered. The moonlight on the lawn was tremulous, as if the sward were a rippling sea. The trees and their black shadows shook as in a breeze. Blended with its borders, the gravel walk seemed unsteady and insecure to step on. This young soldier knew the optical illusions produced by tears. He felt them on his cheek, and saw them sparkle on the breast of his trooper's jacket. He left the house and made his way back ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... 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, ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... 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 ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... Iceland-spar. Transparent and colourless, like glass, this mineral possesses the property of double refraction—any small object viewed through it in a particular direction appearing double. It is much used for optical purposes—especially for obtaining ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous |
