"Optics" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all the discourses and systems of human learning. In this branch [of science] the beam of light is explained on those methods of demonstration which form the glory not so much of Mathematics as of Physics and are graced with the flowers of both [Footnote: 5. Such of Leonardo's notes on Optics or on Perspective as bear exclusively on Mathematics or Physics could not be included in the arrangement of the libro di pittura which is here presented to the reader. They are however but few.]. But its axioms being laid down at great length, ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... rosy beauty, and in prime of years! This hates a flounce, and this a flounce approves, This shews the trophies of her former loves; Polly avers that Sylvia dress in green, When last at church the gaudy Nymph was seen; Chloe condemns her optics, and will lay 'Twas azure sattin, interstreak'd with grey; Lucy invested with judicial pow'r, Awards 'twas neither—and the strife ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... but in some important respects varying from, Aristotle's De Anima. The anatomy of the eye is next described; this is done well and evidently at first hand, though the functions of the parts are not given with complete accuracy. Many other points of physiological optics are touched on, in general erroneously. Bacon then discusses vision in a right line, the laws of reflection and refraction, and the construction of mirrors and lenses. In this part of the work, as in the preceding, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... into activity a host of entities which become themselves radial centers; these generate still others, and so on endlessly. This principle, like every other, patiently publishes itself to us, unheeding, everywhere in nature, and in all great art as well; it is a law of optics, for example, that all straight lines having a common direction if sufficiently prolonged appear to meet in a point, i.e., radiate from it (Illustration 31). Leonardo da Vinci employed this principle of perspective in his Last Supper to draw the spectator's eye to the ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... the question," said the president. "I should not like to state that of itself mere paralysis need incapacitate a professor. Dr. Thrum, our professor of the theory of music, is, as you know, paralysed in his ears, and Mr. Slant, our professor of optics, is paralysed in his right eye. But this is a case of paralysis of the brain. I fear it is incompatible ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... network and a cellular NMT-450 network; waiting lists for telephones are long; local service outside Minsk is neglected and poor; intercity - Belarus has a partly developed fiber-optic backbone system presently serving at least 13 major cities (1998); Belarus's fiber optics form synchronous digital hierarchy rings through other countries' systems; an inadequate analog system remains operational international: Belarus is a member of the Trans-European Line (TEL), Trans-Asia-Europe (TAE) fiber-optic line, and ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the sensation of colour, which treats the investigation of the laws of visible colour as a branch of human physiology, incapable of being deduced from the laws of light itself, as set forth in physical optics. It takes advantage of the methods of optics to study vision itself; and its appeal is not to physical principles, but to our consciousness ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... magnetism and electricity, a solar system, a plurality of worlds, the earth's shape, inclined axis, situation in space, and connection with other spheres, the separate existence of disembodied life, the laws of optics, much of recondite natural history:—all these can be easily proved to be alluded to in detached, or ingeniously compared, passages of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is very likely, however, that Huntington has anticipated some of this, although I have never ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... light or to be illustrated by my notes. Earlier in life he had nourished a hope that his name might become illustrious as the emendator of the 'Commentaries of John, Archbishop of Canterbury on Optics and Perspective.'[26] Indeed the following ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... is to discover how it operates. The eternal forms of things are laws of natural action. Such are the law of gravitation, the laws of optics or of chemical combination. A static picture unless so interpreted must be at once valueless ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... feelings and passions than to the reason and judgment of the army. The author of the piece is entitled to much credit for the goodness of his pen, and I could wish he had as much credit for the rectitude of his heart; for, as men see through different optics, and are induced, by the reflecting faculties of the mind, to use different means to attain the same end, the author of the address should have had more charity than to mark for suspicion the man who should recommend moderation and longer forbearance; or, in other words, who should not think as ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... mayne, And with the other he his launce besped; And then felle bleedyng on the bloudie plaine. His launce it hytte Fitz Broque upon the hede; Upon his hede it made a wounde full slyghte, 405 But peerc'd his shoulder, ghastlie wounde inferne, Before his optics daunced a shade of nyghte, Whyche soone were closed ynn a sleepe eterne. The noble erlie than, withote a grone, Took flyghte, to fynde ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... optics still continuing to engross Newton's attention, he followed up his researches into the structure of the sunbeam by many other valuable investigations in connection with light. Every one has noticed the beautiful colours manifested in a soap-bubble. Here was a subject which not unnaturally ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... the existence of more or less accentuated markings upon the surface of Mars. The progress of optics, admitting of greater magnifications, exhibited the form of these patches more clearly, while the study of their motions enabled the astronomers to determine with remarkable precision the diurnal rotation of this planet. It occurs in 24 hours, 37 minutes, 23.65 seconds. Day and ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... they tell me, turns too fast, By European optics scanned and glassed; But when we look at Europe, although fair, They must have had new Joshuas working there; For, be our eagerness just what it will, She, spell-bound, seems to ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... end, for I could not well get lower, I sat still, scratching my caput in the midst of a gay company of morning visitors, enjoying the gratifying consciousness that I was distinctly visible to them, although my dazzled optics could as yet distinguish nothing. To add to my pleasurable sensations, I now perceived, from the coldness of the floor, that in MY downfall the catastrophe of my unmentionables had been grievously rent, but I had nothing for it but sitting ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... science in contrast to the prior | Aristotelian approaches and in comparison | to the Ramist approaches of Bacons day. | He rejected them both. | | Scholars then look beyond Bacon and | evaluate his logic machine in contrast to the | "classical mechanics" of Newtonian Optics | (physics): linear time-sequence prediction. | | Bacon was not seeking that type of | "cause/prediction"science. He was seeking | hidden, "unwritten" "laws" of nature, | more on the model of Pasteur than of | Newton. ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... technical term 'virtual memory', prob. from the term 'virtual image' in optics] 1. Common alternative to {logical}; often used to refer to the artificial objects (like addressable virtual memory larger than physical memory) simulated by a computer system as a convenient way to manage access to shared ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... then very rare accomplishments; and is pronounced by Roger Bacon, a very competent judge, of whom we shall presently have occasion to speak, to have spent much of his time, for nearly forty years, in the study of geometry, astronomy, optics, and other branches of mathematical learning, in all of which he much excelled. So that, as we are informed from the same authority, this same Robert of Lincoln, and his friend, Friar Adam de Marisco, were the two most learned men in the world, and excelled ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... cage containing an automatic Devil revealing the future for a penny in the slit, and Miss JESSIMINA worked the oracle with a coin advanced by myself, and the demon, after flashing his optics and consulting sundry playing-cards, did presently produce a small paper which she ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... his new life, together with the use of a pocket sextant, prompted him to make various experiments for himself. The only sources from which he could obtain helpful information, however, were some cheap elementary books on mechanics and optics which he procured from the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge; these he studied and "puzzled over" for several years. "Having no friends of my own age," he wrote, "I occupied myself with various pursuits in which I had begun to take an interest. Having learnt the ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... is from Old Fr. pincel (pinceau), a painter's brush, from Lat. penicillus, a little tail. The modern meaning of pencil, which still meant painter's brush in the 18th century, is due to association with pen. The older sense survives in optics and in the expression "pencilled eyebrows." The ferrule of a walking-stick is a distinct word from ferule, an aid to education. The latter is Lat. ferula, "an herbe like big fenell, and maye ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... which are thus more distinct when seen in succession are called opposite colours by Sir Isaac Newton in his optics, Book I. Part 2, and may be easily discovered by any one, by the method above described; that is by laying a coloured circle of paper or silk on a sheet of white paper, and inspecting it some time with steady eyes, and then either gently closing them, or removing them on another part of the white ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... we furnished was a couple of textbooks on lens-grinding and telescope-design, and a book on optics. You see, when we made that deal with them, they realized that we weren't any better fighters than they were; we just had better weapons. To have the same kind of weapons, they'd have to learn to make them, and once they began studying ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... stript of his "brief authority", shall stand, a trembling ghost before that equal bar: then shall the evil spirit, from the black budget of his crimes, snatch the following bloody order, and grinning an insulting smile, flash it before his lordship's terrified optics. ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... claim When the loud cares of business are withdrawn, Nor well-drest beggars round thy footsteps fawn; In that still, thoughtful, solitary hour, When Truth exerts her unresisted power, Breaks the false optics tinged with fortune's glare, Unlocks the breast, and lays the passions bare: Then turn thy eyes on that important scene, And ask thyself—if all be well within. Where is the heart-felt worth and weight of soul, Which labor ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... all but purely vegetable food, and from all drinks but water; and it is also stated that some of his important labors were performed at these seasons of strict temperance. While writing his treatise on Optics, it is said he confined himself entirely to bread, with a little sack and water; and I have no doubt that his remarkable equanimity of temper, and that government of his animal appetites, throughout, for which he was so distinguished to the last hour of his life, were owing, in no ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... place not of honour, stands or sprawls up querulous, that he too, though short, may see,—one squalidest bleared mortal, redolent of soot and horse-drugs: Jean Paul Marat of Neuchatel! O Marat, Renovator of Human Science, Lecturer on Optics; O thou remarkablest Horseleech, once in D'Artois' Stables,—as thy bleared soul looks forth, through thy bleared, dull-acrid, wo-stricken face, what sees it in all this? Any faintest light of hope; like dayspring after Nova-Zembla night? Or is it but blue sulphur-light, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... investigation. As a school-boy I obtained (despite the frequent closing of my visual organs) considerable Insight into Physical Science in the course of numerous pugilistic encounters. A close Application to Optics at that time enabled me to get some ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... giant in a pismire, I not grope; Deny it,—and an ant, with on my back A firmament, the skiey vault will crack. Our minds make their own Termini, nor call The issuing circumscriptions great or small; So high constructing Nature lessons to us all: Who optics gives accommodate to see Your countenance large as looks the sun to be, And distant greatness less ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... him when the problem is to construct an etymology by following the gossamer clews that lead from sensual images to the metaphorical and tropical adaptations of them to the demands of fancy and thought. The nice optics that see what is not to be seen have passed into a sarcastic proverb; yet those are precisely the eyes that are in the heads and brains of all who accomplish much, whether in science, poetry, or philosophy. With the kind of etymologies we are speaking of, it is practically ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... then remarked, "which has latterly been hailed as showing that the lines were not lines but a series of dots, was made the other day in France. The observer saw perfectly correctly, but one with knowledge of the optics of a telescope should have known that the effect observed was the inevitable result of using an aperture which the seeing did not warrant; as he could easily have assured himself by looking at the shattered rings round the synchronous ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... models, faultless alike in brain and leg. But when it came to the delicate finish, when the last touches were to be made, his hand shook a little, and the more delicate members went awry. It was thus that instead of the power of seeing every colour properly, one man came out with a pair of optics which turned everything to green, and this verdancy probably transmitted itself to the intelligence. Another, to continue the allegory, whose tympanum had slipped a little under the unsteady fingers of the man-maker, heard everything in a wrong sense, and his life was miserable, because, if you sang ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... optics, as they called it, and whether a certain injury to the brain would produce blindness or not, but they could not agree about it, and said they must test it by experiment by-and-by; and next they discussed ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... school in which the enlarged mind is to be formed, the varied information acquired, the appreciation of the grand and the beautiful imbibed, which are essential to an accomplished and really useful writer of travels? Sulphuric acid and Optics, Anatomy and Mechanics, will do many things; but they will never make an observer of Nature, a friend of Man, a fit commentator on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... [Endnote BB] deluded long By Fancy's dazzling optics, these behold The images of some peculiar things With brighter hues resplendent, and portray'd With features nobler far than e'er adorn'd Their genuine objects. Hence the fever'd heart Pants with delirious hope for tinsel charms; Hence oft obtrusive on the eye of scorn, Untimely zeal her witless ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... disputing which could see the best: At last they agreed to put it to the test. Said Chang: "A marble tablet, so I hear, Is placed upon the Bo-hee temple near, With an inscription on it. Let us go And read it (since you boast your optics so), Standing together at a certain place In front, where we the letters just may trace. Then he who quickest reads the inscription there The palm for keenest eyes henceforth shall bear." "Agreed," said Ching; "but let us try it soon: Suppose ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... laid down for him. On the contrary, his passion for learning seemed to increase with the diminution of the time available for its gratification. He studied Italian, Greek, mathematics; Maclaurin's Fluxions served to "unbend his mind"; Smith's Harmonics and Optics and Ferguson's Astronomy were the nightly companions of his pillow. What he read stimulated without satisfying his intellect. He desired not only to know, but to discover. In 1772 he hired a small telescope, and through it caught a preliminary glimpse of ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... Sand Beach Beacon was quite instructive; since we viewed there a practical application of an important principle in optics, based on the reflection ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... very strong presumption. Again, it is easy to over-value such complex instruments as we possess. The possessor of an up-to-date camera, well instructed in the function and manipulation of every part, but ignorant of all optics save a hand-to-mouth knowledge of the properties of his own lens, might say that a priori no picture could be taken with a cigar-box perforated by a pin-hole; and our ignorance of the mechanism of the Psychology of any organism is greater by many times than ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... Tibboo and Touarick country, for it stretches as far or farther south than the Tibboos, some fifteen or twenty days' journey. From the town of Ghat to the base of this range is half a day, eastward, although the range looks, by the ordinary delusion of Desert optics, to ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... principal end of my studies."[13] In 1629 he asks Mersenne to take care of himself "till I find out if there is any means of getting a medical theory based on infallible demonstrations, which is what I am now inquiring."[14] Astronomical inquiries in connexion with optics, meteorological phenomena, and, in a word, the whole field of natural laws, excited his desire to explain them. His own observation, and the reports of Mersenne, furnished his data. Of Bacon's demand for observation and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... the reason and judgment of the army. The author of the piece is entitled to much credit for the goodness of his pen, and I could wish he had as much credit for the rectitude of his heart; for, as men see through different optics, and are induced by the reflecting faculties of the mind to use different means to attain the same end, the author of the address should have had more charity than to mark for suspicion the man who should recommend moderation ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... every observed effect and some material object with which it seems to be in causal connection, will, I suppose, have to be allowed to exercise their ingenuity in any way to satisfy their minds, even though they may have to revise their theory with every fresh discovery in optics or radioactivity. ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... disagreeable sensation produced by it returned. I determined to go home and place myself in the same position—as regards the mirror—and if the same effect was produced, I would make up my mind that it was the natural result of some principle of refraction or optics, which I did not understand, and dismiss it. I tried the experiment with the same result; and as I had said to myself, accounted for it on some principle unknown to me, and it then ceased to trouble me. But the God who works through the laws of nature, ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... this is not a good time for studying optics. What we want is knowledge that shall bring us to the brig without being shot at by ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... come back to what I was originally saying—I repeat, sir, I am at twelve paces from my object, six from the mirror, which, doubled by reflection, makes twelve; such is the law of optics. I suppose you ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... within this circle of flesh, nor is it in the optics of these eyes to behold felicity. But besides this literal and positive kind of death, there are others whereof divines make mention, as mortification, dying unto sin and the world. In these moral acceptations, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... went down town. i have been away a long time but the town looks about the saim. Kelley and Gardners have sole 2 gnifes and Fogg and Fellows have sole sum pipes and a cuppy Olliver Optics magazene and old Luke Langly has sole a gointed comb and a tin horn and wagon but in other respecks things look about the saim. i am glad i wasent away long enuf for the place to chainge. that wood be dreadful. i herd of a man onct whitch was sent to ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... have a perfect knowledge of optics and be a skilful stone-cutter. The numerous planes or faces which he cuts on the surface of the diamond are called facets. In the treatment three distinct processes are utilized—cleaving, cutting, and ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... simple, and easily intelligible mathematical theory of the various phenomena of light, and particularly, the theory of the dispersion of colors. Lord Brougham read a paper of his Researches, Experimental and Analytical, on Light. His Lordship's ambition is to shine in optics, as in every thing else; but you will see by a London paragraph that his researches have nearly cost him his eyesight. Dr. Aran submitted a Memoir, which seems to be quite important, on local anesthetic medication. "In the medical point of view," he remarks, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... substance capable of casting such a shadow could have interposed; and, indeed, as they described it, the shadow seemed to have no sort of relation to the position of the light, and appeared, as I have said, in manifest defiance of the laws of optics. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... he growled, the Royal grumbler spied a bit of broken tumbler In a long undusted corner just behind the chamber door. When his hungry optics spied it, he stood silently and eyed it, Then he smote his thigh with ecstasy and danced ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... determine progress holds in these cases also. Instances might be given proving how, in Science, an advance of one division presently advances other divisions—how Astronomy has been immensely forwarded by discoveries in Optics, while other optical discoveries have initiated Microscopic Anatomy, and greatly aided the growth of Physiology—how Chemistry has indirectly increased our knowledge of Electricity, Magnetism, Biology, Geology—how Electricity has reacted on Chemistry and Magnetism, and has developed ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... no dicta can make them so. A fashion framer should needs be a natural philosopher, and hold the rudiments of all science in her grasp. Botany, mineralogy, conchology should walk as handmaidens to philosophy; optics should steer the rudder of color's bark when launched ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... (it was the family Missal) Was ornamented in a sort of way Which ancient mass-books often are, and this all Kinds of grotesques illumined; and how they, Who saw those figures on the margin kiss all, Could turn their optics to the text and pray, Is more than I know—But Don Juan's mother Kept this herself, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... beyond this, through the discoveries of Herschel, affording an insight into the distribution of the stellar archipelagos, and of the grand outlines of celestial architecture. In physics, the decomposition of light and the principles of optics discovered by Newton, the velocity of sound, the form of its undulations, and from Sauveur to Chladni, from Newton to Bernouilli and Lagrange, the experimental laws and leading theorems of Acoustics, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Polytechnic. But what was the agency which enabled me to see the figures and flowers, and trees and gravel, all transferred, as by the cunning act of some magician, from the right to the left? Simply a swinging pane of perfectly transparent glass. To those who have neither studied the laws of optics nor seen the phenomenon in question, it must seem impossible that a pellucid window-pane could transfer so faithfully that which happened at one end of the garden to the other as to cause it to be mistaken for ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... were not first laid by the mother? For the first six years of his life, said Comenius, the child must be taught by his mother. If she did her work properly she could teach him many marvellous things. He would learn some physics by handling things; some optics by naming colours, light and darkness; some astronomy by studying the twinkling stars; some geography by trudging the neighbouring streets and hills; some chronology by learning the hours, the days ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... should suffice for evidence; And whoso desires to penetrate Deeper, must dive by the spirit-sense— No optics like yours, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... these, as a mental necessity, we are urged indefinitely on to a minuteness without conceivable limit, in effect, a minuteness that is beyond all finite measure or conception. So that, as modern physics and optics have enabled us not to conceive merely, but to actually realize, the vastness of spatial extension, side by side with subtile tenuity and extreme divisibility of matter, so the labor, enthusiasm, and perseverance of thirty years, stimulated by the insight of a rare and master ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... rushed his opponent about the ring at will. He hit him when and where he pleased. The man was absolutely helpless before him. With left and right hooks Billy rocked the "coming champion's" head from side to side. He landed upon the swelling optics of ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... silhouette or the anthelion of the Scandinavian Alps, and the aerial cities so often seen by explorers and travelers? Do not they defy the law of optics? Must we understand the intricacies of articulation and the forces back of it before we can appropriate speech? Must we discard all belief in an infinite mind because we cannot understand it, and therefore say we are not a part of it because there is no Infinite? Should we discard the belief ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... riddle! Is he going up or down hill—or both at once? No human being can tell. He did not like the "sulphur and treacle" of "our Scotch connoisseurs;" but what colours has he not added here to his sulphur—colours, too, that we fear for the "idea of truth" cannot coexist! And how, in the name of optics, could it be possible for any painter to take in all this, with the "fathomless intervals," into an angle of vision of forty-five degrees? It is quite superfluous to ask "who is likest this, Turner or Poussin?" There immediately follows a remark upon another picture in the National Gallery, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... the sides of a church spire are slightly curved, so that they swell out a little in the centre. This is called the entasis of the spire, and belongs to the study of optics in architecture. Where the spire has no entasis the same effect is produced by the introduction of small projecting gables, bands of carving, or a little coronal ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... philosopher and the deeply-learned in nature's laws will read of this with generous disdain; but they forget that this spring had its charter right from God, and was fed from other fountains farther up the hill. Besides, optics is God's own science—and this was ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... in policy was due to a more careful consideration of the optics of the stage. For it may be assumed that she "made up" in order to counteract the privative effects of the stage lights and appear neither more nor less beautiful and expressive to the public in the playhouse ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... He does not know whether his oldest acquaintance is a knave or a fool, but he can pronounce a pompous lecture on all the principal characters in history. He cannot tell whether an object is black or white, round or square, and yet he is a professed master of the laws of optics and the rules of perspective. He knows as much of what he talks about as a blind man does of colours. He cannot give a satisfactory answer to the plainest question, nor is he ever in the right in any one ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... with their eyes greatly enlarged, so that they seemed as those of the fish men take from a mile depth in the Gulf of Nice,—which are excessively magnocular,—even as large as the round tower of Copenhagen were their optics, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... volume takes a wide survey of the field of error, embracing in its view not only the illusions of sense dealt with in treatises on physiological optics, etc., but also other errors familiarly known as illusions, and resembling the former in their structure and mode of origin. I have throughout endeavoured to keep to a strictly scientific treatment, that is ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... for the binomial theorem, discovered at the age of twenty-two; for the invention of fluxions; for the demonstration of the law of gravitation; and for the discovery of the different refrangibility of rays of light. His treatise on Optics and his Principia, in which he brought to light the new theory of the universe, place him at the head of modern philosophers—on a high vantage ground, to which none have been elevated, of his age, with the exception ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... of another room, dedicated to optics, as we entered, we saw a beautiful nosegay in a vase, which appeared to be composed of the rarest flowers. I approached it with an intention of inhaling its fragrance, when, lo! my hand passed through it. It was an exquisite optical illusion. "Ah!" said my elegant ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... ten minutes, during which I, by this time in perfect possession of my wits, observed all the female Brocklehursts produce their pocket-handkerchiefs and apply them to their optics, while the elderly lady swayed herself to and fro, and the two younger ones whispered, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... Charlotte Corday. So let her also be shielded from the ban of ridicule. Nonsense of enthusiasts is very different from nonsense of ninnies. She was truly a high-minded person, of that order who always do what they see to be right, and always have confidence in their optics. She was not unworthy of a young man's admiration, if she was unfit to be his guide. She resumed her ancient intimacy with Austin easily, while she preserved her new footing with Richard. She and Austin were not unlike, only Austin never dreamed, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... who comes from a good fam'ly, like you-all,' says Old Man Enright to Dan, sort o' soothin' of him, 'oughter be removed above makin' comments on pore old Cape shiftin' his optics. Troo! it's a weakness, but where is the sport who hasn't weaknesses likewise. Which you-all is a mighty sight to one side of bein' perfect yourse'f, Dan, an' yet we don't go 'round breakin' the information off in ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Gerard of Cremona, in Lombardy (1114-1187), who studied at Toledo a little later, rendered a similar service for Italy. He also translated many works from the Arabic, including Ptolemy's Almagest (p. 49), a book of astronomical tables, and Alhazen's (Spanish scholar, c. 1100) book on Optics. Other monks studied in the Spanish cities during the twelfth century, a few of whom brought back translations of importance. Frederick II [7] employed a staff of Jewish physicians to translate Arabic works into Latin, but, due to his continual war against the Pope and his final outlawry by the Church, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... blue, or any intermediate shade,—upon an object; never white light; that is the province of wisdom. We get beautiful effects from wit,—all the prismatic colors,—but never the object as it is in fair daylight. A pun, which is a kind of wit, is a different and much shallower trick in mental optics; throwing the shadows of two objects so that one overlies the other. Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special effects, but always keeps its essential object in the purest white light of truth.—Will you allow me to pursue ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... bushes as far down as he could and crouched low over the ground the rest of the way even though he knew it was too dark for ordinary optics to pick him up. He had an absorber in his pack that would take care of most of the various radiations and detectors he would come into contact with, and for the most part, unless the alarms were being intently watched, he didn't ...
— The Happy Man • Gerald Wilburn Page
... light of optics, and sees through dioptrics, He's a dab at projectiles—ne'er misses his man; He's complete in attraction, and quick at reaction, By the doctrine of chances he squares every plan; In hydraulics so frisky, the whole Bay of Biscay, If it flowed but with whiskey, he'd store ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... done? I shall be gazed at now The more; be pointed at, There goes the monster! Nor have I hid my horrors from myself; For, though corporeal light be lost for ever, The bright reflecting soul, through glaring optics, Presents in larger size her black ideas, Doubling the bloody prospect of my crimes; Holds fancy down, and makes her act again, With wife and mother:—Tortures, hell and furies! Ha! now the baleful offspring's brought ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... physics, and yet gravitation itself is a hypothesis. Then, as to the other branches of physics—electricity and magnetism. The whole scheme of these important sciences rests on the hypothesis of "electric fluidity," or of imponderable matter of which the existence is nothing less than proved. Or optics? Optics certainly appertain to the most important and completest branch of physics, and yet the undulatory theory of light, which we accept now as the indispensable basis of optics, rests on an unproved hypothesis, on the subjective assumption of an ethereal medium, whose existence no one is in ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... not help being interested in observing the bohemianism of these gently reared but decadent sons of respectable English families. As soon as they could they left the table, and Tobey, observing their uneasiness in spite of his damaged and nearly useless optics, decided to send them to another room where they could pass the afternoon without further annoyance. Stubby escorted the party and ushered them into a good sized room which he said was "Algy's study," although no one ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... not the faculty of looking two ways at once, like Brahma; and my optics were irresistibly drawn in an ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... you do not lay the blame on the science of optics. The moon is immeasurably less distant than Mars, yet with Mars our communication is fully established. I presume you will not say ...
— In the Year 2889 • Jules Verne and Michel Verne
... that rise of the New Learning mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. It is a statement made by Roger Bacon, the greatest of Oxonian scholars of the thirteenth century, who, long before the Renascence, did much to restore the study of science, especially in geography, chronology, and optics. In his Opus ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... an object is altered if we shut one eye, or squint, or look previously at something dazzling; but all these are bodily acts, and the alterations which they effect are to be explained by physiology and optics, not by psychology.[27] They are in fact of exactly the same kind as the alterations effected by spectacles or a microscope. They belong therefore to the theory of the physical world, and can have no bearing upon the question whether what we see is causally ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... that the sacrifice he proposed to make in the interests of trade must be made good to him in some way. So, "by way of getting even," he made violent love to all the pretty eyes he met in his commercial travels—"to have something to think about after he should have found favor in the strabismic optics of ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... have dwelt at considerable length on repetition and inversion; we now come to the reciprocal interference [Footnote: The word "interference" has here the meaning given to it in Optics, where it indicates the partial superposition and neutralisation, by each other, of two series of light-waves.] of series. This is a comic effect, the precise formula of which is very difficult to disentangle, by reason of the extraordinary variety ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... Turgot as reading Ariosto, as making experiments in physics, and as having forgotten all that had passed within the last two years, save when the sight of evils that he would have mitigated or removed, happened to remind him of it. He occupied himself busily with chemistry and optics, with astronomy and mechanics, and above all with meteorology, which was a new science in those days, and the value of which to the study of the conditions of human health, of the productions of the earth, of navigation, excited his most ardent anticipations. Turgot also was so ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... Celebrated Juvenile hit the Fresh Air the second Defendant came into The Dock, taking long sneaky Strides and undulating like a Roller Coaster. She was a tall Gal and very Pale, with Belladonna Optics and her Hair shook out and a fine rhythmical Bellows Movement above the ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... bottom. For this purpose, when he was again left alone, he got out of bed and examined the window- shutters. He soon perceived a small chink in one of them, through which a ray of light found its passage and rested upon the ceiling. Now, the science of optics will inform us that the pictures of the white cow and the pigs, and of other objects out of doors, came into the dark chamber through this narrow chink, and were painted over Benjamin's head. It is greatly to his ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of thy course? Soaring through air to find the bright abode, The empyreal palace of the thundering God, We on thy pinions can surpass the wind, And leave the rolling universe behind, From star to star the mental optics rove, Measure the skies, and range the realms above, There in one view we grasp the mighty whole, Or with new worlds amaze the ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... to the branch library to turn in his book on which a six-cent fine impended. With the yellow card in his hand, he went over to the fiction section of the open shelves. No more Hentys, no more Optics. He was in love, and ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... Moors themselves, which had held out so marvellously under this system of oppression, began now to be exhausted. Many signs of this might be discerned by much less acute optics than those of the archbishop; but his were blinded by the arrogance of success. At length, in this inflammable state of public feeling, an incident occurred which led to a ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... which he regarded the calamity that had befallen the family, he carried the high-backed chair to his old corner by the fire, and, seating himself on the very edge, drew forth a brown pocket-handkerchief, and applied the same to his optics. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... not eventually command as general a public adhesion as is commanded by a physical science. Even the personally non-religious might accept its conclusions on trust, much as blind persons now accept the facts of optics—it might appear as foolish to refuse them. Yet as the science of optics has to be fed in the first instance, and continually verified later, by facts experienced by seeing persons; so the science of religions would depend for its original material on facts of personal ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... body, it either passes through it, or is reflected by it, or it may be absorbed. Again, in proportion as the rays of light become distant from the body from which they emanate, they diverge one from the other. In accordance with the laws of optics, the rays of light, in passing through an optical instrument like the eye, must cross each other, and thus produce an inverted image of the object from which the rays proceed. With the general view of the structure ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... His discoveries in optics were in his own time almost equally famous, while in his later life he shared with Leibnitz the honor of inventing the infinitesimal calculus, a method which lies at the root of all the intricate ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... These studies in optics and this correspondence with the learned Kepler indicate Hariot's great advancement in natural philosophy as early as 1606 to 1609 and give an earnest of his inventive genius and scientific enterprise with his ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... little helpful science? Just think, father, you cannot read your Bible without spectacles, and millions of others are in the same fix; and spectacles cannot be made without some knowledge of the science of optics." ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... that blessing find) Is not to act or think beyond mankind; No powers of body or of soul to share, But what his nature and his state can bear. Why has not man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, man is not a fly. Say what the use, were finer optics given, To inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven? Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, To smart and agonize at every pore? Or quick effluvia darting through the brain, Die of a rose in aromatic pain? ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... Pennsylvania; Professor of Optics and Refraction; formerly Physician in Philadelphia Hospital; Member of Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania State ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... made prodigious progress during this epoch. Several eminent men flourished in the Netherlands. But the glory of others, in countries presenting a wider theatre for their renown, in many instances eclipsed them; and the inventors of new methods and systems in anatomy, optics and music were almost forgotten in the splendid improvements of ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan |
