"Decimal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Pall Mall Gazette sent round to all sorts and conditions of eminent men, inviting lists of "The Hundred Best Books"—the first serious attempt to introduce a decimal system into Great Britain—I remember that these eminent men's replies disclosed nothing so wonderful as their unanimity. We were prepared for Sir John Lubbock, but not, I think, for the host of celebrities who followed ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... time-worn church at Honedale, her thoughts, it must be confessed, were wandering more to the to-morrow and Aikenside, than to the sacred words her lips were uttering. She knew it was wrong, and with a nervous start would try to bring her mind back from decimal fractions to what the minister was saying; but Maddy was mortal, and right in the midst of the Collect, Aikenside and its owner would rise before her, together with the wonder how she and her grandfather would feel ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... there are a certain number of what may be called transition cells. Although these latter are inevitably irregular, the dimensions of the second or third type are so well calculated that when the decimal system was first established, and people were seeking an incontestable standard of measurement, it was the cell of the bee which was proposed first of all by Reamur. Each one of these cells is an hexagonal tube placed upon a pyramid form, and ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... established custom, if not, by the actual Statute of Limitations, to this kind old gentleman who bad preempted it. True, America is free; but in order to establish tradition some one must be a repetend—a repeating decimal. The heroes are not all heroes of steel and gold. See one here that wielded only weapons of iron, ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... reckoning time had never appealed to me. For those of my readers who may only be familiar with Earth time measurements, an enar is about eighteen Earth days, an enaren a little less than two Earth days, and an enaro nearly four and a half hours. The Universal system has the advantage, I admit, of a decimal division; but I have found it clumsy always. I may be stubborn and old-fashioned, but a clock face with only ten numerals and one hand still strikes me as being ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... absolutely in a subsequent one, no matter after what interval of time, then the course of the events between these two moments would go on repeating itself for ever and ever afterwards in due order, down to the minutest detail, in an endless series of cycles like a circulating decimal. For the universe comprises everything; there could therefore be no disturbance from without. Once a cycle, ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... electric telegraphs have multiplied our transactions a hundredfold, but no adequate labour-saving machinery has been introduced into the counting-house, where the value of these transactions has to be recorded and adjusted. The simple and scientific method of computation by what is called the decimal system, is used at this moment, we are told, by more than half the human race. Not only has it been by law established in most of the countries of Europe, but throughout the great empires of China and Russia; it is penetrating the Ottoman ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... fact, every time when I could snatch a few minutes. I really believe that at one time I could have repeated the whole of the book from memory. Now I found the value of arithmetic, and set to work in earnest on proportion, vulgar and decimal fractions, and, in fact, everything in school work that I could turn to account in the science of chemistry. The result of this sudden application was that I was seized with an illness. For some months ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... and the result was everywhere the same. He took the principal ledger and found that, leaving the high figures out of the question, very stupid mistakes in the additions had been made. Evidently his wife knew nothing of denominate quantities or decimal fractions. This unheard of cheating of the servants must ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... man laughed. "You'll find it way back in the forest," he said, "and enough sweet potatoes to distil fifty gallons of spirit—all proof, sir, decimal 1986 specific gravity water extracted by Soemmering's method—in fact, as good as you could get it ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... protected areas, the moose is the animal that is most easily exterminated. Its trail is easily followed, and its habits are thoroughly known, down to three decimal places. As a hunter's reward it is Great. Strange to say, New Brunswick has found that the moose is an animal that it is possible, and even easy, to protect. The death of a moose is an event that is not easily concealed! Wherever it is thoroughly understood ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... you like about him," I can hear A.G.4 remarking to M.S.19 (decimal 9 recurring) as they met in the corridor on their way to lunch, "but I find him ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... except to translate decimals and fractions, and Date-words where a doubt might otherwise arise (unless in a phrase like "To see Jiji," "delay a spy," &c.); and in case of the decimals, S, as the initial letter, means (not 0, but) the decimal point. (1) If there is an integer followed by a decimal, two separate words are used; the decimal-word begins with S, thus: 945.51 barley sold; 71.3412 "good Samaritan." (2) If it is a decimal by itself, the S indicates the decimal ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... its final approach to Weald under Calhoun's own control. He'd made brightness-measurements on his previous journey and he used them again. They would not be strictly accurate, because a sunspot could knock all meaning out of any reading beyond two decimal places. But the first breakout was just far enough from the Wealdian system for Calhoun to be able to pick out its planets with the electron telescope at maximum magnification. He could aim for Weald itself, allowing, of course, for the lag in the apparent motion of its image because of ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... October 1908 commanded the introduction of a uniform tael currency; but another decree of May 1910 established a standard currency dollar weighing 72 candareens (a candareen is the 100th part of the tael ounce) and subsidiary coins of fixed values in decimal ratio. This decree properly enforced would introduce a much needed stability into the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... characters on the same tablet, according to the relative importance of the text, show a striving after clearness and method such as can by no means be said to be a characteristic of Classical Greek inscriptions.'[*] A decimal system of numbers was in use, the highest single amount referred to being 19,000, and percentages were evidently well understood, as a whole series of tablets is ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... Keen, "is the ancient Egyptian word for 'little,' 'Ket.' The next, below, written in two lines, is 'Samaris,' a proper name—the name of a woman. Under that, again, is the symbol for the number 18; the decimal sign, ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... soil of St. Mary country, Maryland, to be valued at $1 to $3 an acre, and the same kind of land in Prince George county, adjoining the District of Columbia, to be worth $1.50 to $5; but do you not know the American evolutional movement could easily move all those decimal points two places and at once make those values read from $100 to $500 an acre. And likewise, it would be a very simple matter to change the yield of corn in Georgia from eleven bushels per acre and have it read one hundred and ten bushels. Why not, ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... decimal off with one deep thrust. And all the time we talked you seemed to see Something down there to smile at in the dust. (Oh, it was without prejudice to me!) Afterward I went past what you had passed Before we met and you ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... barren-ground caribou, fur seal, and sea birds on their nesting cliffs, to assume such security from their numbers as to ignore man; and all such cases are highly interesting manifestations of the influence of the fourth law when carried out to six decimal places. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... that really rises out of the region of science into the region of art. It is a pattern, like the egg-and-dart ornament or the Greek key. One might edge a wall-paper or fringe a robe with a recurring decimal. And while the voter luxuriated in this light exactitude of the numbers, a thought crossed his mind and he almost leapt to his feet. "Why, good heavens!" he cried. "I won that election; and it was won by one vote! But for me it would have been the despicable, broken-backed, disjointed, ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... your arm, and then square it, cube it, add decimal nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, and then see how ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... put out because she is no longer the favourite as she was with Frau Doktor St. The other day it was quite unpleasant in the Maths lesson. In the answer to a sum there happened to be 1-3, and then the Nutling asked what 1-3 would be as a decimal fraction; so we went on talking about recurring [periodic] decimals and every time she used the word period, some of the girls giggled, but luckily some of them were Jews, and she got perfectly savage and simply screamed at us. In Frau Doktor St's lesson in ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... that into two parts, determined by new moon and full moon (Cambodia, Siam; cf. the Mexican period of thirteen days). The division into three periods of ten days each (Egypt, Greece, Annam, Japan) ignores lunar phases and seeks a convenient and symmetrical arrangement. With this decimal system is perhaps connected the division of the month into six periods of five days each (Yoruba, Java, Sumatra, and perhaps Babylonia). The Romans had a somewhat irregular official division of the first half of the month into three parts (Kalends, ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... grades or powers. The "confidence" required of the people was to be shown not only towards their nominees, but towards those who were charged with the final and most important act of selection. The winnowing processes in the election of representatives were to be carried out on a decimal system. The adult voters meeting in their several districts were to choose one-tenth of their number, this tenth being named the Notabilities of the Commune. These, some five or six hundred thousand in number, meeting in their several Departments, were thereupon to choose ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... statistics as to the actual cost per thousand for chopping, skidding, drawing, sawing logs. He laughed at Sylvia's attempts to best him, and in return beat about her ears with statistics for timber cruising, explained the variations of the Vermont and the scribner's decimal log rule, and recited log-scaling tables as fluently as the multiplication table. They were in the midst of this lively give-and-take, listened to with a mild amusement on Arnold's part, when they emerged on a look-out ledge of gray slate, and were struck into ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield |
