"Acoustic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the baggage-room at the Gare du Nord may be crude, but its acoustic properties are superb. The noise which accompanied the arrival of the cortege was simply ear-splitting. I was in the very act of wondering whether, if I decided to retire, my legs would carry me, when, with a crash, my uniform-case ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... that he forced his way out until he could see the Princess of Sant' Ilario's beautiful profile dark against the bright light of the street. She was still speaking, but he could no longer hear her voice, some acoustic peculiarity of the columns had in all probability been the means of conveying to him the fragment of conversation he had overheard. Avoiding recognition, he slipped away through an opening in the throng and just succeeded in reaching ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... an affair depending much on processions, proclamations, on delusions optical, acoustic; on palaverings, manoeuvrings, holdings back, then hasty pushings forward; and indeed is mainly, in more senses than one, under guidance of the Prince of the Power of the Air. Unbeautiful, like a World-Parliament of Nightmares (if the reader ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... The Acoustic Telephone. Sound Waves. Hearing Electricity. The Diaphragm in a Magnetic Field. A Simple Telephone Circuit. How to Make a Telephone. Telephone Connections. Complete Installation. The Microphone. Light Contact Points. How to Make a Microphone. Microphone, ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... there are natural phenomena to which some one has given the name "acoustic shadows." If you stand in an acoustic shadow there is one direction from which you will hear nothing. At the battle of Gaines's Mill, one of the fiercest conflicts of the Civil War, with a hundred guns in play, ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... those wonderful silences through which his slightest tones carry clearly and sweetly. I have played not only solos, but chamber music in this hall, and was always sorry to stop playing. In most halls the acoustic conditions ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... lies in their finer and fuller aesthetic faculty. The sense of hearing and that of seeing stand in polar opposition, and thus a natural scale offers itself by which we may rank and arrange our artists. At the one end of the scale is the acoustic artist, i.e., the musician. At the other end of the scale is the optic artist, the painter and sculptor. Between these, and comprising both these activities in his own, is the poet, who is both acoustic and optic artist. He translates the sounds ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... stature. Vitruvius speaks also of vehicles of sound, distributed throughout the building; but commentators are much at variance with respect to their nature. In general it may be assumed, that the theatres of the ancients were constructed on excellent acoustic principles. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... of its technical construction and acoustic properties, was the ancestor of both trumpet and trombone; the connexion is further established by the derivation of the words Sackbut and Posaune (the German for trombone) from buccina. The relation was fully recognized in Germany during the 15th and 16th centuries, as two translations ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... as at present known to the comparative physiologist are grouped as the acoustic and the non-acoustic. The cochlea is supposed on very good grounds to have to do with the acoustic functions, and the organs of the semicircular canals on equally good evidence are thought to have to do with such of the non-acoustic functions as equilibration and orientation. ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... Hill, '65e, of Saginaw upon his death in 1909, forms one of the unique features of the University's equipment. Despite its seating capacity, with the stage, of over 5,000, it has almost perfect acoustic properties, so that a whisper from the stage can be heard in any portion of this great hall. Its completion in 1913 enabled the University at last to bring the great part of the students together under one roof upon such occasions ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... a speaker should test beforehand the acoustic properties of the auditorium in which he is to speak for the first time. A helpful plan is to have a friend seat himself at the back of the hall or church, and give his opinion of the quality and projecting power of the speaker's ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... heard of a woman who went to a hotel unaccompanied and discovered that the acoustic properties of her room were such that every time she spoke aloud there was an echo. She then made a bold attempt to get in a last word, and in so doing talked herself ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... as he turned to depart from me. I had only to glance at his rapt and noble countenance to perceive the high acoustic laws which separated his sensibility to the vesper from my own. To him it was religious expression. To me ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... the advantage of you at Memmert, in spite of acoustic obstacles. Your friends made an appointment behind your back, and I, in my misplaced zeal, have taken some trouble to attend it; so that I've had a working demonstration on another matter, the invasion of England ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... distinctly to me, but it seemed to come from a different point. I turned my ear to the wind, and in the succeeding moments I was more and more baffled. One bay sounded from below and next from far to the right; another from the left. I could not distinguish voice from echo. The acoustic properties of the amphitheater beneath me were too ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... perform, and yet he executed it in a way which showed what fruit our mutual interchange of ideas had borne. I also took care that, by means of the complete reconstruction of the hall, I should obtain good acoustic conditions for the orchestra, which I had arranged according to quite a new system of my own. As may be imagined, it was only with the greatest difficulty that the money for this could be found; however, I ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner |
