"Millionth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deal larger than that used in the other photographs, the end will be visible only to a few. Mr. Nelson has photographed here what it is absolutely impossible to see. What the size of these ends may be, I have no means of telling. Dr. Royston Piggott has estimated some of them at less than one-millionth of an inch, but, whatever they are, they supply for the first time objects of extreme smallness the form of which is certainly known, and, therefore, I cannot help looking upon them as more satisfactory tests for the microscope ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... magician," I thought for the thousandth time, as, for the millionth, Aaron looked at her sitting so demurely regal at his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... measurements as these have been made at all, but the astonishment grows when one hears the results. It appears from Clerk-Maxwell's calculations that the mean free path, or distance traversed by the molecules between collisions in ordinary air, is about one-half-millionth of an inch; while the speed of the molecules is such that each one experiences about eight billions of collisions per second! It would be hard, perhaps, to cite an illustration showing the refinements of modern physics better than this; unless, indeed, one other result that followed directly ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... of spark dots on the drum can be measured accurately to 0.01 mm. As the drum is 500 mm. in circumference, and its normal speed is 86 rev. per sec., it is theoretically possible to measure time to one four-millionth of a second, though with a cartridge 1 m. long, such refinement has not ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... year ago. I would not advise an operation now. It is too late. In fact, I would be opposed to it. There are men in my profession who would take the chance, I've no doubt,—men who would risk all on the millionth part ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... but one standard of weights and measures, in a country subject to the same laws. The Academy of Sciences was charged to seek and present the best mode of carrying this decree into execution. That society proposed the adoption of the decimal division, by taking for a fundamental unit the ten-millionth part of the quarter of the terrestrial meridian. The motives which determined this choice were the extreme simplicity of decimal calculation, and the advantage of having a measure taken from nature. The latter condition ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... numbers. But there are more irrational numbers than there are whole numbers or fractions. There are probably exactly as many points in space as there are irrational numbers, and exactly as many points on a line a millionth of an inch long as in the whole of infinite space. There is a greatest of all infinite numbers, which is the number of things altogether, of every sort and kind. It is obvious that there cannot be a greater number than this, because, if everything has been ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... about the same as glass, and hence there is little chance of the glass cracking through unequal stress. The vacuum in the bulb is made by a mercurial air pump of the Sprengel sort, and the pressure of air in it is only about one-millionth of an atmosphere. The bulb is fastened with a holder like that shown in figure 64, where two little hooks H connected to screw terminals T T are provided to make contact with the platinum terminals of the lamp (P, figure 63), and the ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... of all scoundrelly factions, are, and have ever been, the most scoundrelly, the most ungenerous, the most ungrateful. What have they done for Fonblanque, who could have kicked them overboard on his toe-nail? Their abilities put together are less than a millionth of his; and his have been constantly and most zealously exerted in their favour. My first conversation with Kenyon was about the publication of his poems, which are just come out. They are in part extremely clever; particularly one on happiness and another on the shrine of the Virgin. He was ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... intelligent creatures ever lived prior to Adam is proven by lack of affirmative evidence. If it be true, as Romanes declared, that the power of abstract reason in all the species was only equal to that of a child 15 months old, then each species would possess less than one millionth of that. ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... matter of the vegetable kingdom, which derived its support from the absorption and conversion of inorganic matter. And so constant and universal is this absorption, waste, and reproduction, that it may be said with perfect certainty that there is left in no one of our bodies at the present moment a millionth part of the matter of which they were originally formed! We have seen, again, that not only is the living matter derived from the inorganic world, but that the forces of that matter are all of them correlative with and convertible into ...
— The Present Condition of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... show it to be between 5 ft. 6 in. and 5 ft. 7 in., but to go closer than that requires many precautions. Training in observation and the use of delicate instruments thus narrow the limits of approximation. Similarly with regard to space and time, there are instruments with which one millionth of an inch, or of a second, can be measured, but even this approximation, although far closer than is ever practically necessary, is not accuracy. In the statement of measurements there is no meaning in more than six significant figures, and only the most careful ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... to believe that their happiness and well-being were to be secured by means of institutions rather than by their own conduct. Hence the value of legislation as an agent in human advancement has usually been much over-estimated. To constitute the millionth part of a Legislature, by voting for one or two men once in three or five years, however conscientiously this duty may be performed, can exercise but little active influence upon any man's life and character. Moreover, it is every day becoming more clearly understood, that the function of ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... clad—the heart, alas! goes bare. Oh, I would rather shiver in the snow— My heart downed softly with Tecumseh's love— Than sleep unprized in warmest couch of fur. I know your love is wide, and, for that I Share but a millionth part of it, and feel Its meagreness, I plead most eagerly For this poor white, whose heart is full of love, And gives it ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... to tell you how we measure the capacity of a condenser. We use units called "microfarads." You remember that an ampere means an electron stream at the rate of about six billion billion electrons a second. A millionth of an ampere would, therefore, be a stream at the rate of about six million million electrons a second—quite a sizable little stream for any one who wanted to count them as they went by. If a current of ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... I think I, even I (an insect compared with this creature), have set my life on casts not a millionth part of this man's. But, after all, a crown may not be worth dying for. Yet, to outlive Lodi for this!!! Oh that Juvenal or Johnson could rise from the dead! 'Expende—quot libras in duce summo invenies?' ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... Mr. Carnegie does not personally use any of the steel ingots made in the works in which he owns shares. He uses practically no steel at all, except a knife or two. Mr. Rockefeller does not use the oil-wells he owns, nor a hundred-millionth part of the coal ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... prey of a practised seducer. The main peculiarity lay in the fact of her respectable birth, and his position, she being the daughter of a solicitor, he the son of a nobleman. Marriage was promised, of course, as it has been promised a million times with the same intent, and for the millionth time was not performed. The seducer took her from her home, kept her quiet for a time, and when the novelty was gone, abandoned her. The old story went on; poverty—a child—a mother's love struggling with a sense of shame—a visit to her father's house at the last moment, as a forlorn hope. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... embarking on the same cycle over again without assistance at any point from the observer. The most sensitive organ for perception of a stimulus was the human tongue. An average European could by his tongue detect an electrical current as feeble as six micro-amperes, a micro-ampere being a millionth part of a unit of electrical current. Professor Bose found that his Hindu peoples could detect a much feebler current, namely, 1.5 micro-amperes. It was an open question whether such a high excitability of the tongue was to be claimed as a distinct advantage. But the fact might ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... this forlorn hope. When the time comes, the queens leave, and are off up into the unheard-of sky, as if an earthworm should soar with eagle's feathers; past the gauntlet of voracious flycatchers and hawks, to the millionth chance of meeting an acceptable male of the same species. After the mating, comes the solitary search for a suitable site, and only when the pitifully unfair gamble has been won by a single fortunate queen, does the Attaphila climb tremblingly down and accept what ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... millionth part of the thanks in her heart, and hurried away with her dress. As she left the shop a smart dash of rain struck upon her face. She smiled and ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... chance of sixes ten times in succession is 1 divided by the tenth power of 36; in other words, such a concurrence is only likely to happen once in 3,656,158,440,062,976 trials, a number which no dice-player's experience comes up to a millionth part of. But if, instead of sixes ten times, any other given succession of ten throws had been fixed upon, it would have been exactly as unlikely that in any individual's experience that particular succession ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... everything that is subject to variation, labor has its average, which justifies us in saying that, on the whole, day's work pays for day's work, neither more nor less. It is quite true that, if we compare the products of a certain period of social life with those of another, the hundred millionth day's work of the human race will show a result incomparably superior to that of the first; but it must be remembered also that the life of the collective being can no more be divided than that of the individual; ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... quite sincere and unsparing, but had Judith been ten years older, she would have laughed outright. As it was, she grew sober and sympathetic and, like a woman, began to wonder, for the millionth time, perhaps, how far she had ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... contains the hundredth of the hundredth, or the ten thousandth part of a grain of the medicinal substance. Repeat the same process with the same quantity of fresh sugar of milk, and every grain of your powder will contain the millionth of a grain of the medicinal substance. When the powder is of this strength, it is ready to employ in the further solutions and dilutions to be made use of ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and in order to overcome this obstacle of the loss of sight man invented spectacles. Spectacles led men to the telescope, with which he read all the starry heavens; and had it not been for the failure of sight we wouldn't have seen a millionth part that we have. In the first place, we owe nothing but truth to the dead. I am going to tell the truth about them. There are three theories by which men account for all phenomena—for everything that happens: First, the supernatural. In the olden time, everything ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... affairs in 1789, to introduce a universal decimal system, to be applied to everything whatever that could be counted, weighed, or measured. They started from the measurement of the globe itself, and took as the basis of their whole system the ten-millionth part of a quadrant of a meridian, equal to 39-371/1000 inches English. This they called a metre (measure), and to it, as a unit, they prefixed the Greek numerals to express increase in the decimal ratio; thus decametres, tens of meters; hectametres, hundreds ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... 1792-5, were taken those measurements, the outcome of which was the metric system. Two mathematicians, by name Delambre and Mechain, were charged with the necessary calculations, the metre, or a ten-millionth part of the distance between the poles and the equator (32,808 English feet), being made the unit of length. Uniformity of weight followed, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... ruining a good analogy with side reactions.) More than two and a half million of those little pellets could be dropped into the flask without the operator having anything more to worry about than if he were dropping grains of lead or gold into the container. But after the five millionth, dropping them in by hand would only be done by the ignorant, the stupid, or the indestructible. A qualitative ...
— Fifty Per Cent Prophet • Gordon Randall Garrett
... laughter and a snatch or two of close harmony, the lunch was spread. One of the men picked out a place for the fire (against the trunk of a two-century oak; perhaps the millionth noble old tree to be threatened thus with death from care-free picnickers' fires) and the other man sauntered across to the trespass board to ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... centimetre in section has a resistance of one ohm for infinitely small currents, its resistance when acted on by an electromotive force of one volt (provided its temperature is kept the same) is not altered by so much as the millionth of a millionth part. This fine result is the more gratifying since Ohm's law is entirely empirical and does not rest at ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... the North. The gentleman from Virginia raises a curious objection; that the owner does not receive a full compensation because he pays a portion of it himself. Well, I suppose the owner would pay the one hundred and thirty-millionth part of the price! Does not the same objection lay against the payment of any tax whatever? It is asked, Does this payment transfer the legal title to the slave? Well, it probably goes to the party who pays ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... ammonia and other chemicals was even more wonderful. "It is an astonishing fact that so inconceivably minute a quantity as the one twenty-millionth of a grain of phosphate of ammonia should induce some change in a gland of Drosera sufficient to cause a motor impulse to be sent down the whole length of the tentacle; this impulse exciting movement often through an angle ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... everlastingly, and to be forgiven you must forgive. God is very forgiving—He forgives the best of us a thousand vile offenses. But He never forgives unconditionally. His terms are our repentance and our forgiveness of those who offend us one-millionth part as deeply as we offend Him. Therefore in praying against Hawes you have prayed against yourself. Give me your slate. No; take ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... T.-T. He then got into his stride and gave me twenty minutes' Czecho-Slovakism when I was dying to discover whether HOBBS had scored his two-millionth run. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... merely affirm that in every form sleeps the creative sound that is its life and being. The ear is a miserable organ at best, and the majority are far too gross to know clair-audience. What about sounds, for instance, that have a wavelength of a hundred, a thousand miles on the one hand, or a millionth part of an inch on ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... any speculations on this grand and awful subject. We can hardly comprehend the cause of a simple atmospheric phenomenon, such as the fall of a heavy body from a meteor; we cannot even embrace in one view the millionth part of the objects surrounding us, and yet we have the presumption to reason upon the infinite universe and the eternal mind by which it was created and is governed. On these subjects I have no confidence in reason, I trust ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... little, but it was mistaken kindness, for now she's got me on her mind. And as the two hundred and eighty million benighted souls of India are her continual concern, I seem a superfluity. To think of being the two hundred and eighty millionth and ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... seeing more—for the simple reason that, in a miraculous fashion, this was exactly what he did do in glaring out the harder. It was beyond explanation, but the very act of blinking thus in an attempt at showy steadiness became one and the same thing with an optical excursion lasting the millionth of a minute and making him aware that the edge of a rug, at the point where an arm-chair, pushed a little out of position, over-straddled it, happened just not wholly to have covered in something small and ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... note. From St. Vincent's tower during the Convention, 1792-5, were taken those measurements, the outcome of which was the metric system. Two mathematicians, by name Delambre and Mchain, were charged with the necessary calculations, the mtre, or a ten-millionth part of the distance between the poles and the equator (32,808 English feet), being made the unit of length. Uniformity of weight followed, and became law ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards |
