"Oscillation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Man helped to produce alike the anarchy of the first French Revolution and the remedial despotism of the Jacobins and their successor Napoleon; and the oscillation between under-government and over-government, between individualism and socialism has continued to this day. Each coincides with obvious human interests: the blessed in possession prefer a policy of laissez ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... kinetic and potential energy are complementary to one another, the sum-total of the two combined always remaining the same in any cycle of work, according to the principle of the conservation of energy. We get a good example of this oscillation from kinetic to potential, and vice versa, in the planetary system. When the earth is farthest from the sun, its velocity, and consequently its kinetic energy, is at its lowest point; but there the potential energy is at its greatest. ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... nothing. You can see and hear the spark indeed—but that is a mere secondary disturbance we can for the present ignore—I do not mean any secondary disturbance. I mean the true ethereal waves emitted by the electric oscillation going on in the neighborhood of this recoiling dielectric. You pull aside the prong of a tuning fork and let it go; vibration follows and sound is produced. You charge a Leyden jar and let it discharge; vibration ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... it is now by universal suffrage, every man who does his duty must exercise political functions. And, if the evils which are inseparable from the good of political liberty are to be checked, if the perpetual oscillation of nations between anarchy and despotism is to be replaced by the steady march of self-restraining freedom; it will be because men will gradually bring themselves to deal with political, as they now deal with scientifical ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... one of great complexity, another Japanese earthquake, that of June 20th, 1894, was unusually simple in character. The movement at Tokio consisted of one very prominent oscillation with a total range of 73 mm. or 2.9 inches in the direction S. 70 W.; the vibrations which preceded and followed it being comparatively small. Most, if not all, of the damage caused by the earthquake must have been due to this ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... the Swiss lakes, as well as to those of Scotland. It is, therefore, a general phenomenon, which may be observed in all lakes of moderate dimensions. The inhabitants of the shores of the Lake of Geneva have long designated this rhythmical oscillation of the level of the water by the term of Seiche; and this designation has been ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... to determine force mathematically, there rigorous, exact science ceases. Nature a system of regularly moved particles of mass; all that takes place mechanical movement, viz., the combination, separation, dislocation, oscillation of bodies and corpuscles; mathematics the organon of natural science! Into this circle of modern scientific categories are articulated, further, Galileo's new conception of motion and the conception of atoms, which, previously employed by physicists, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... effect of this oscillation? Take the case to which I have previously referred. The finer or coarser sediments that are carried down by the current of the river, will only be carried out a certain distance, and eventually, as we have ...
— The Past Condition of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... and butter and a sprinkle of parsley. And even as we watch, the golden mass melts together; sighs and quivers, and thickens into wrinkles; bodies itself slowly into form and shape, under crafty oscillation; and is at last dexterously rolled out, a burnished ingot, upon the long platter, with a flourish that bespeaks practice and confidence. The stiff face of the old woman involuntarily relaxes with honest pride; she looks up ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... of those high-strung men who pay for their periods of religious rapture by hours of melancholy. This oscillation of the spirits in extraordinary men appears to be more or less a law of nature; and this the Widow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... whether this oscillation would slacken or increase with time. Would she swing on a longer and more dangerous rhythm? Would she be flung backwards and forwards ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... people acquire a see-saw motion of their bodies from one side to the other, as they sit, like the oscillation of a pendulum. By these motions the muscles, which preserve the perpendicularity of the body, are alternately quiescent, and exerted; and are thus less liable to fatigue or exhaustion. This therefore resembles ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... sometimes contemptible agents, the prisoners must be subjected, on the principle of dispersion. Such practical difficulties start up at every instant, and thus expose the policy of the government to perpetual oscillation. An instance, of later date, will demonstrate the danger of minute sub-divisions, which exclude a public press and a public opinion. A commandant resolved the seduction of the daughter of a prisoner: he crept into her father's house, and offered violence. The father wrote to ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... to the corners of the great stone tomb with the covering of glass, which was being dragged upward. As it arose it filled closely the whole aperture. When its bottom had reached the level of the floor it stopped, and remained rigid. There was no room for oscillation. It was at once surrounded by a number of black figures, who raised the glass covering and bore it away into the darkness. Then there stepped forward a very tall man, black-bearded, and with head-gear like my guide, but made in triple tiers, he also was gorgeously ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... great oscillation in the emotional interest, and the hot places may shift before one almost as rapidly as the sparks that run through burnt-up paper. Then we have the wavering and divided self we heard so much of in the previous lecture. Or the focus ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... of heaves from the back of the crowd had sent a series of long ripples running through it, all the heads swaying rhythmically in the one direction like a wheatfield in a squall. With every impulsion the oscillation increased, those in front trying vainly to steady themselves against the rushes from behind, until suddenly there came a sharp snap, two white stakes with earth clinging to their points flew into the outer ring, and a spray of people, dashed from the solid wave behind, were thrown against ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... slow and spasmodic. There was a clearly perceptible interval—probably several minutes—between the first stirrings of consciousness and the full clarification of my faculties. I began to be aware of the rumble and oscillation of the train without realizing what was meant. Then I opened my eyes and blinked at the lamp, and vaguely noted the yellow oil washing to and fro in the bowl. Then the white square of the "Avis aux Voyageurs" caught ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... position to distend the side ropes, and having to get over the outstretched legs of these officious aids, made the affair a very much more nervous proceeding than it would otherwise have been. The lowness of the side-ropes, and the oscillation of the ricketty structure rendered the feat altogether a rather more amusing performance to the looker on than to the actual performer, and I was not to reach the opposite shore. On the arrival of the coolies, they all hung back, and regarded the machine with utter astonishment, and when one ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... to insure that the line should be clear. The powerful engine called Rochdale (No. 247 on the company's register) was attached to two carriages, with a guard's van behind. The first carriage was solely for the purpose of decreasing the inconvenience arising from the oscillation. The second was divided, as usual, into four compartments, a first-class, a first-class smoking, a second-class, and a second-class smoking. The first compartment, which was nearest to the engine, was the ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of difficulty in descending the stairs; there was practically no oscillation of any kind in this still and windless summer night, and the two came down easily and ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... motion is kept up electrically in such a way as to last indefinitely, provided that the elements of the pile are renewed gradually, and that from time to time the metallic contact is changed, which causes, at every oscillation, the current to pass from the pile into the magnet, which keeps ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... to grow a little uneasy. A disagreeable surprise, if my excursion, in which I was to break banks and hearts, and, as you see, heads, should end upon the gallows or the guillotine. I was not clear, in those times of political oscillation, which was the ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... listless to explore a new one, kept in action by inertness, moving only because we have been in motion, with a sort of plodding perseverance we resolve to measure back again the very same joyless, hopeless, and inglorious track. Backward and forward,—oscillation, space,—the travels of a postilion, miles enough to circle the globe in one short stage,—we have been, and we are yet to be, jolted and rattled over the loose, misplaced stones and the treacherous hollows of this rough, ill-kept, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... quote from an authority on this point, because I think it of much value, and because it is not probable that the writer was influenced by prejudice and preconceived ideas. I shall quote from John Stuart Mill's "System of Logic," page 477: "There is a perpetual oscillation in spiritual truths, and in spiritual doctrines of any significance, even when not truths. Their meaning is almost always in a process either of being lost or of being recovered. Whoever has attended to the history of the more serious convictions ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... upon these winter months, Piers could distinguish nothing clearly. It was a time of confused and obscure motives, of oscillation, of dreary conflict, of dull suffering. His correspondence with Olga, his meetings with her, had no issue. He made a thousand resolves; a thousand times he lost them. But for the day's work, which kept him in an even ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... very curious facts were soon ascertained. Galileo found, for example, that a pendulum of a given length performs its oscillations with the same frequency though the arc described by the pendulum be varied greatly.(1) He found, also, that the rate of oscillation for pendulums of different lengths varies according to a simple law. In order that one pendulum shall oscillate one-half as fast as another, the length of the pendulums must be as four to one. Similarly, by lengthening the pendulums nine times, the oscillation ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... if not loss of life, which occured to-day to the 8 o'clock a.m. train from Wakefield, on the Great Northern railway, near Doncaster, by which I was a passenger. As the train approached Doncaster, about 9 o'clock, the passengers were suddenly alarmed by the vehement oscillation of the carriages. In a few seconds the engine had run off the line, dragging the greater part of the train with it across the opposite line of rails. By this time the concussion had become so vehement that the grappling chains connecting the engine, tender, and first ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... by the sunset glow as the dust of a battlefield is reddened with blood. I felt as if I were stabbed; the red dust seemed to swim round me; I staggered slightly: in another instant I had recovered myself, but the momentary oscillation had terrified my comrades. The seventh and highest, feeling the human pyramid tremble beneath him, involuntarily, unconsciously, opened his arms to save himself. He did not lose his balance, but he let the child fall. It dropped as an apple broken ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... of wood, after having disappeared for a moment, came to the surface, and floated about with the oscillation produced by wind ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... uncertainty reinforce them. Even hand or arm movements by their motor suggestion may focus the desires of the customers, while unskillful, erratic movements may scatter the attention and lead to an inner oscillation of the ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... remedy. But the invention by which he overcame the difficulty completely, consisted in employing a column of mercury as the "bob" of the pendulum. The hot weather, which lengthened the steel rods, raised the column of mercury, and so brought the centre of oscillation higher. If the column of mercury was of the right length, the lengthening or the shortening of the pendulum was exactly counterbalanced, and the variation of the clock, through changes of the temperature, ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... exceedingly animated speaker, resembling in this particular Mr. M'Duffie. M. Constant, however, has a different motion from the last gentleman, his movement being a constant oscillation over the edge of the tribune, about as fast, and almost as regular, as that of the pendulum of a large clock. It resembles that of a sawyer in the Mississippi. General Lafayette speaks with the steadiness and calm that you would expect from his character, and is always listened to ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... with dense clouds, but not a breath of air was stirring; and the balloon, kept in its place by only a single anchor, experienced not the slightest oscillation. ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... minor defect in English literature. To some it may even seem to be a virtue. A more serious weakness, which our literature shares with other modern literatures, is one-sidedness or incompleteness of view, which reveals itself by a series of reactions, and in England has taken the form of an oscillation between sentimentalism and a rather cruel realism, the latter being dominant at the present time. These two schools represent excesses of temperament, the one of generosity and kindliness, the other of truth; and among our writers of genius ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... part or head is lowered to its extreme limit, the machine occupies the least space. In this position, by means of the foot-holder it communicates oscillation to the legs; by means of the single-rubber, it acts upon the feet, ankles, and lower leg; by means of the double-rubber, it acts upon the legs, including the feet, the patient ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... which water dilates in passing from a state of fluidity into that of vapor; the quantity of water that a certain weight of coal can convert into vapor; the quantity and weight of steam expended at each oscillation by one of Newcomen's engines of known dimensions; the quantity of cold water that must be injected into the cylinder to give a certain force to the piston's descending oscillation; and finally the elasticity of steam at ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... has, too," Ione exclaimed. "This is the first time it occurred to me that our recoil from throwing the safe overboard and the oscillation of our space-segment must have created a tremendous electrical field in the tetra-ordinate apparatus. The reaction is reversible, you see. The field swings the space-segment, or the swinging of the space-segment creates the field. And the field was ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... the secret of mechanical invisibility is constructed. Gracely, an American—following a long series of world-wide experiments, tests of current strength, frequencies of oscillation, suitable metals, etc., which I cannot detail here—in 1955 was the final developer of the mechanisms ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... expedition which sailed under the command of Sir James Clark Ross. These instruments were similar to the ordinary portable barometers, and differed from them only in the mode of their suspension and the necessary contraction of the tubes to prevent oscillation from the motion of the ship. The barometer on shipboard should be suspended on a gimbal frame, which ought not to swing too freely, but rather so as to deaden oscillations by some degree of friction. To the upper portion of the tube in this construction of instrument light is alike accessible either ...
— The Hurricane Guide - Being An Attempt To Connect The Rotary Gale Or Revolving - Storm With Atmospheric Waves. • William Radcliff Birt
... fact that terrestrial magnetism and the boreal auroras exhibit an oscillation parallel to that of the solar spots, and apparently the same ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... had deciphered the last word, when I had it borne fully in upon me, the significance of it all, I turned to the one natural effort to answer this Martian communication. I sent out from the battery of our transmitter the longest wave of magnetic oscillation I could emit. The message was simple: "Have received all. ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... rider in one of three positions. Though the rider can by these devices assume nearly that position with respect to the treadles which is most advantageous, he cannot obtain that curious fore and aft oscillation made use of by the Ottoist in climbing hills, which, as the model on the table shows, enables him to get past the dead points without even moving, and which, therefore, makes the Otto by far the best hill-climbing machine there is, if account is taken of the high speeding with which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... mysterious stations, dragging furiously its freight of luxury and light and human masks through placid and humble villages and towns, of which it ignored everything save their coloured signals of safety. Ages of oscillation seemed to pass. In traversing the corridors one saw interior after interior full of the signs of wearied humanity: magazines thrown aside, rugs in disorder, hair dishevelled, eyes heavy, cheeks flushed, limbs in the abandoned attitudes of fatigue—here and ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... my arrival I embarked for Stamboul, the Turkish quarter, in one of those long caicks which are as it were the hackney coaches of Constantinople. The least oscillation is sufficient to upset these light barks, which are impelled with inconceivable rapidity by two or three fine light-looking Arnaouts, dressed in silken shirts. In two minutes, having traversed the Golden Horn, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... relapsed, and really for so long a time that the day inevitably came for a further sounding of their depths. These depths, constantly bridged over by a structure firm enough in spite of its lightness and of its occasional oscillation in the somewhat vertiginous air, invited on occasion, in the interest of their nerves, a dropping of the plummet and a measurement of the abyss. A difference had been made moreover, once for all, by the fact that she had all the while not appeared to feel the need of rebutting his ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... lasted for about five minutes, when it ceased as abruptly as it had begun; but even that short time had sufficed to beat the sea down so smooth that the previous violent rolling of the ship was reduced to a gentle, scarcely perceptible oscillation. ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... Judaism, Protestant Christianity an advance on Roman Catholic Christianity, and Liberal and Rational Christianity an advance on Church Orthodoxy. But all such advances are subject to reaction and relapse. Reaction differs from relapse in this, that it is an oscillation, not a fall. Reaction is the backward swing of the wave, which will presently return, going farther forward than before. Relapse is the fall of the tide, which leaves the ships aground, and the beach uncovered. Reaction is going back to recover some substantial ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... what is surely the most wonderful spot in the world, the front firing trench, the outer breakwater which holds back the German tide. How strange that this monstrous oscillation of giant forces, setting in from east to west, should find their equilibrium here across this particular meadow of Flanders. 'How far?' I ask. '180 yards,' says my guide. 'Pop!' remarks a third person just in front. 'A sniper,' ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... reign: the Legislative Assembly found themselves on that day face to face with a king who, destitute of authority, ruled over a people destitute of moderation. They felt on their first sitting the oscillation of a power without a counterpoise, that seeks to balance itself by its own wisdom, and changing from insult to repentance, wounds itself with the weapon that has been placed ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... have been one of the first who observed this significance of the oscillation of the birth-rate, though he expressed it in a somewhat peculiar way, as the social capillarity theory. It is the natural and universal tendency of mankind to ascend, he declared; a high birth-rate and a strong ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... dictate letters to secretary, who takes down in shorthand. (I never yet found a secretary who could write in a train. I can write quite easily; the secret is to sit up, holding pad in hand, and let the body move with the oscillation of the train. To write on your knee or on a table, or in any other way but this, is impossible.) 3.30 arrive at destination; go to hotel and order dinner. Then to my "travelling studio"—a large case fitted up with everything necessary for drawing in black and white. Straight to private ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... think so, Madame," was his reply, in a French sufficiently heavy and stiff-jointed, enforced by a dubious oscillation of the head. ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... the barometer is only .084. So regular is the oscillation, as likewise the variations of the magnetic needle, that the hour may be known within fifteen minutes by the barometer or compass. Such is the clock-like order of Nature under the equator, that even the rains, the most irregular of all meteorological phenomena in temperate ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... dream, it hurries back to the old unconsciousness. Until then, however, its desires are boundless, and every satisfied wish begets a new one. So-called pleasures are only a mode of temporary relief. Pain soon returns in the form of satiety. Life is a more or less violent oscillation between pain and ennui. The latter, like a bird of prey, hovers over us, ready to swoop down wherever it sees a life secure ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... indeed, were for a time completely submerged. Before long, however, the sea fell again, and as it did so the observers "found it impossible to resist the impression that the islands were rising bodily out of the water." For no less than three days this strange oscillation of the sea continued to be experienced, the most remarkable ebbs and floods being noticed at Honolulu, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... misnomer. Liza had not been too severe on Dash's physical infirmities when she described him as lame on one of his hind legs, for both those members were so effectually out of joint as to render locomotion of the simplest kind a difficulty attended by violent oscillation. This was probably the circumstance that had recommended Dash as the object of Robbie's half-drunken pastime; and after a fruitless half-hour's exercise the tractable little creature, with a woeful expression of face, was at length poised on ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... Pallas with an analogous relation in their constantly intersecting orbits. As yet, however, we have no certain knowledge as to whether changes in the periods at which the stream becomes visible, or the 'retardations' of the phenomena of which I have already spoken, indicate a regular precession of oscillation of the nodes — that is to say, of the points of intersection of the Earth's orbit and of that of the ring; or whether this ring or zone attains so considerable a degree of breadth from the irregular grouping and distances apart of the small bodies, that it requires several ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... rascally waters! The remainder of our voyage was a succession of squalls, calms, contrary winds, sticking on shoals for hours, and being detained on shore, with an accompaniment of pitching, tossing, oscillation and botheration, that baffles all description. However, time brings the greatest miseries to an end; and in the process of time we arrived at Tadousac—loaded our boat deeply with flour—shook hands with our friends—related our adventures—bade them adieu—and again found ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... a corked porous vessel that carries a glass tube, c, which dips into a vessel containing either water or methylic alcohol. Three or four gas jets, one of which is shown at E, are arranged around the porous vessel, as close as possible, but in such a way as not to touch it during the oscillation of the beam. These gas jets communicate with a gasometer tilled with hydrogen, the bell of which is so charged as to furnish a jet of sufficient strength. Experience will indicate the best place to give the gas jets, but, in general, it is well to locate them at near the center ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... gradually altering. But this alteration may be so slow, that it does not appreciably affect the movement of the engine in a single revolution. We can also suppose that the plane in which the rails have been laid has a slow oscillation in level, and that the whole orbit is with more or less uniformity moved ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... would have certified little or nothing in it; but that little or nothing was pleasantly uttered, and served perhaps as well as something cleverer to pass a faint electric flash between common mind and mind. The slouch, the hands-in-pocket mood, the toe-and-heel oscillation upon the hearth-rug—those flying signals that self was at home to nobody but himself, had for the time vanished; desire to please had tied up the black dog in his kennel, and let the white one out. By keeping close in ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... much as that equilibrium should be altogether lost. As everything in the universe is in movement, and as all the forces which are contained in matter act one against the other and counterbalance one another, all is done by a kind of oscillation; of which the mean points are those to which we refer as being the ordinary course of nature, while the extremes are the periods which deviate from that course most widely. And, as a matter of fact, with animals ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... real meaning of that mystery which appears so prominently in the lives of great sceptics, which appears with especial prominence in the life of Charles II. I mean their constant oscillation between atheism and Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism is indeed a great and fixed and formidable system, but so is atheism. Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas, more daring than the vision of a palpable day of judgment. For ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... condition of topographic old age. The final stage is again the peneplain. This cycle of events is called the erosion cycle or topographic cycle. Uplift may begin again before the surface is reduced to base level; in fact, there is a constant oscillation and contest between erosion and relative uplift of ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... more miry, as in Sicily there are rivers of mud that flow before the lava, and the lava itself, and from these the several places are filled, according as the overflow from time to time happens to come to each of them. But all these move up and down as it were by a certain oscillation existing in the earth. And this oscillation proceeds from such natural cause as this: one of the chasms of the earth is exceedingly large, and perforated through the entire earth, and is that which Homer[43] speaks of, 'very far off, where is ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... and that no contrivance of man can permanently emancipate narrow natures and depraved minds. His politics were always those of a poet, circling in the larger orbit of causes and principles, careless of the transitory oscillation of events. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... occupied in holding, as usual, the conducting-stick) this key is lowered, the protuberance passes into the cup filled with quicksilver, a slight electric spark is emitted, and the stick placed at the other extremity of the copper ribbon makes an oscillation before its board. The communication of the fluid and the movement are quite simultaneous, no matter how ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... illustrious geometer completely established the perpetual variability of the planetary ellipses. He demonstrated that the extremities of their major axes make the circuit of the heavens; that independent of oscillation, the planes of their orbits undergo displacements by which their intersections with the plane of the terrestrial orbit are each year directed toward different stars. But in the midst of this apparant chaos, there is one element which remains constant, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the giant flail. When it was flung to port the wind helped to hold it there until the resistless surge of the schooner sent it flying wild once more. He knew that no mere flesh and blood could endure many of those collisions with the stays. He resolved to act on the next oscillation to port, in order that his strength might not ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... liquid at rest will obviously assume the shape of a sphere, under the influence of gravitation, and it is a stable form, because any oscillation of the liquid which might be started would gradually die away under the influence of friction, however small. If now we impart to the whole mass of liquid a small speed of rotation about some axis, which may be called the polar axis, in such a way that there are no internal currents ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... circumference is rigidly fixed. Let us suppose that this convex scale is pulled out of shape from the interior, so that it is slightly flattened and as quickly released; it will immediately regain its original convexity owing to the elasticity of the nervures. From this oscillation a ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... worthy friend; for it explains every phenomenon of caloric. Heat is but the motion of atoms, a simple oscillation of the particles of a body. When they apply the brake to a train, the train comes to a stop; but what becomes of the motion which it had previously possessed? It is transformed into heat, and the brake becomes hot. Why do they grease the axles of the wheels? To prevent ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... points of a puzzle more curious than any that had yet come within the scope of his experience. Sometimes he felt confidence, and at other times despair; and of course he had the consolation, which belongs to all litigants, that the opposite party was undergoing the same process of oscillation. It was clear enough that Cowie was the required Oedipus; and if it should turn out that he was dead, or could not be found, the advantage was, with a slight declination, on the part of Charles Napier; insomuch as, while he was indisputably the nephew of the deceased, the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... before. Take for instance the hackneyed historic example of the austerity of the Commonwealth being followed by the licence of the Restoration. You cannot persuade any moral enthusiast to accept this as a pure oscillation from action to reaction. If he is a Puritan he looks upon the Restoration as a national disaster: if he is an artist he regards it as the salvation of the country from gloom, devil worship and starvation of the affections. The Puritan is ready to try the Commonwealth again with a few modern improvements: ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... were peculiarly of the ancient race that dwelt in hollow trees ere white men came. In almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors and heralds of this season, and birds fly with song and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow, to correct this slight oscillation of the poles and ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... stoutly maintain that if they are dry, it is somebody's fault. The most sensational of novels would be dry if couched in the language which some philosophers have seen fit to use in expressing their thoughts. He who defines "existence" as "the still and simple precipitate of the oscillation between beginning to be and ceasing to be" has done his best to alienate our affections from the subject of ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... or two more, the table at which they were seated, began to move up and down with a kind of vertical oscillation, and several things in the room began to slide about, by short, apparently purposeless jerks. Everything threatened to assume motion, and turn the library into a domestic chaos. Mrs. Elton declared afterwards that ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... mentioned, a slight widening of the stream of the Bievre, once a watering-place for cattle. The sun, now at high noon, massed the trees' shadow close around their trunks. The unbroken surface of the water reflected its rays back in our eyes. The current was barely indicated by the gentle oscillation of a few water-lily leaves. Two big blue dragonflies poised and quivered upon our floats, and not a fish seemed to care to ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... doubt of the source whence emanate these high-flown ideas. It cannot be better expressed than as a politique d'ostentation, which is, if we may compare small things with great, eminently French. The oscillation of French and Russian influence, and the amicable manner in which their delegates relinquish the field to each other alternately, implies the existence of a mutual understanding between them. Whether this accord extends to a wider sphere and more momentous questions, time alone will ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... Bissell wished to correct was the oscillation and chatter of the leading truck. This was accomplished by a simple centering device in the form of a pair of V-shaped double incline planes (D on fig. 3) situated at the center of the truck frame (A). The lower planes of the pair were fastened to ...
— Introduction of the Locomotive Safety Truck - Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology: Paper 24 • John H. White
... always an idea that reality can never completely reach. In reality, there will always remain a preponderance of one of these elements over the other, and the highest point to which experience can reach will consist in an oscillation between two principles, when sometimes reality and at others form will have the advantage. Ideal beauty is therefore eternally one and indivisible, because there can only be one single equilibrium; on the contrary, experimental ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... measure over again the duration of a second equal period, so when the volcanic force has remoulded the form of a continent and the adjoining sea-bottom, the same materials are made to do duty a second time. It is true that at each oscillation of level the solid rocks composing the original continent suffer some fresh denudation, and do not remain unimpaired like the wooden and glass framework of the hour-glass, still the wear and tear suffered by the larger area exposed ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... camp, now in that. The camps themselves are fairly matched: Rads and Tories—the sexes of politics—are as evenly created as men and women. They are like ten-pound weights standing on either scale of a balance. What, then, determines the oscillation this way or that? Evidently the miserable little half-ounce weight placed sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other. In fine,'tisthe tiny squadron of free-lances that wins general elections, the voters who think or who don't think, or who veer to be with the majority. The Jacks-o'-both-sides ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... observations here there was a to and fro motion of the earth in the vicinity of Washington amounting to about four-tenths of an inch at the time of its greatest oscillation. These movements kept up in a constantly decreasing ratio until nearly half an hour ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... call money from 2 per cent to 30 per cent; and the fluctuation was even greater during the preceding six months. The Secretary of the Treasury had to step in and by wise action put a stop to the most violent period of oscillation. Even worse than such fluctuation is the advance in commercial rates and the uncertainty felt in the sufficiency of credit even at high rates. All commercial interests suffer during each crop period. Excessive rates for call ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... no two pyrometers agree; the changeable nature of the atmosphere; the uncertainty as to the true level of the sea; the extreme difficulty of measuring accurately the distance between the point of suspension and the centre of oscillation, and even of finding that centre; also the variety of terrestrial attraction, from which cause the motions of the pendulum are also liable to variation, even in the same latitude. In pursuing his researches, Capt. Kater discovered that the motions ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... symptoms before," said Holmes, throwing his cigarette into the fire. "Oscillation upon the pavement always means an affaire de coeur. She would like advice, but is not sure that the matter is not too delicate for communication. And yet even here we may discriminate. When a woman has been seriously wronged ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... accuracy of mechanism, and the slightest irregularity causes the current to rise or fall quite beyond the limits required for distinct signals. No important difference was observed between signals sent by alternate reverse currents and those sent by the more usual method. The amount of oscillation, and the consequent distinctness of signalling, were nearly the same in the two cases. An advantage in the first signals sent is, however, obtained by the use of Messrs. Sieman's and Halske's submarine key, by which the cable is put ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... portion has been taken from the Upaskara of S'ankara Mis'ra on the Vais'e@sika sutras of Ka@nada. It must be noted here that the notion of number according to Vais'e@sika is due to mental relativity or oscillation (apeksabuddhijanya). But this mental relativity can only start when the thing having number is either seen or touched; and it is in this sense that notion of number is said to depend on the visual or ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... not ceased to gaze, with an air of amiable authority, into a world which, as yet, beheld no symptoms of the Indian Mutiny. And yet, gently swinging against the wall, within the black tube, was a voice which recked nothing of Uncle James, of China teapots, or of red velvet curtains. She watched the oscillation of the tube, and at the same moment became conscious of the individuality of the house in which she stood; she heard the soft domestic sounds of regular existence upon staircases and floors above her head, and movements ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Francisco, I find we are already in amongst the hills of a range, and winding in and out through pretty valleys, where all available land is used for farming purposes. We round some curves that look almost impossible, and I begin to feel the oscillation of the carriages, by no means unlike the rolling of a ship at sea. I often wished that it had been summer instead of winter, that I might better have enjoyed the beauty of the scenery as we sped along. As it was, ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... seriously upon his character as a writer, I would remark that there is a sort of knowingness, the wit of which depends, firstly, on the modesty it gives pain to; or, secondly, on the innocence and innocent ignorance over which it triumphs; or thirdly, on a certain oscillation in the individual's own mind between the remaining good and the encroaching evil of his nature—a sort of dallying with the devil—a fluxionary art of combining courage and cowardice, as when a man snuffs a candle ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... liked to walk up and down with him. It was a question he found keeping itself poignantly, yet pleasantly, in his mind, after he had got into his berth under the solidly slumberous Boyne, and inclining now to one solution and now to the other, with a delicate oscillation ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... absolute unconsciousness, I drank—God only knows how often or how much. As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to the drink, rather than the drink to the insanity.... It was the horrible never-ending oscillation between hope and despair, which I could not longer have endured without total loss of reason. In the death of what was my life, then, I received a new, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... chased each other around the control boards, died, were born again. On the screens the three color negatives mixed to purple, shifted through a series of wrong combinations and settled to normal as the stereo-oscillation echoed, convexed insanely, and deepened to hold. Video reception is lousy from five hundred thousand ...
— Measure for a Loner • James Judson Harmon
... speculation, it is a habit of mind: it is not enough for the Hindu that his God is lord of all things: he must be all things and the soul in its endeavour to reach God must obtain deliverance from the fetters not only of matter but of individuality. Hence Hindu theology is in a perpetual oscillation illustrated by the discrepant statements found side by side in the Bhagavad-gita and other works. Indian temperament and Indian logic want a pantheistic God and a soul which can transcend personality, but religious thought and ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... once perceive the difficulties of the shooter. Even supposing the ship to be one of our magnificent ironclads, solid, steady, yielding little to the motion of the water, yet she is under steam, the aim of her guns is altered every moment, some oscillation is unavoidable, and she can only estimate the range of her adversary. Great skill is required, and not only required, I am glad to say, but ready to hand, on the part of the seamen gunners; and low trajectory guns must be provided to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... cripple gradually subsided from his hard rocking into a gentle oscillation. It expressed, perhaps, the soothed mood ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... agitated waters around its base. The Frenchman, unable longer to endure the awful sight bowed his head upon his hands; another moment, and he was lost to sight in the circle of mist and spray that enveloped the foot of the column; then a strong oscillation began to be visible in the body of the water-spout; it swayed heavily to and fro; the cloud at its apex seemed to stoop, and the whole mass broke and fell, with a noise that might have been heard for miles. The sea, far around, was crushed into smoothness ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... ground, constitutes a severe handicap. Again, when travelling at high speed, and this is essential when pursuing a fast aeroplane, the accurate laying of the weapon is extremely difficult, owing to the oscillation of the vehicle itself, especially if the road surface is in a bad condition. The sighting arrangements are of a wonderfully complete character, as described elsewhere, but the irregular rolling movement ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... a frantic oscillation of the Atom Smasher, a sense of death, awful and indescribable—and stark unconsciousness rushed over Jim. His last thought was that Lucille's arms were about him, and that he was holding her. Nothing ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... be great, but whose feeling is, I think, genuine. Whatever were his faults, and they were not few, hypocrisy was not one of them. His nature was fierce and honest. He might boast, but he could not pretend. His oscillation between the reformed and the Romish church can hardly have had other cause than a vacillating conviction. It could not have served any prudential end that we can see, to turn catholic in the reign of Elizabeth, while in prison for killing in a duel a player ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... held firmly to the carriage door and the oscillation of the cab caused her to nod violently, but it was not in assent to Christopher's proposition. She appeared to be turning something over ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... total extent; for they are found turned up from under the newer formations along the flank of the Ural chain. It would thus seem that they spread continuously across the whole breadth of Russia in Europe. Though almost everywhere undisturbed, they afford evidence of some terrestrial oscillation between the time of their formation and that of the Silurian rocks on which they rest, for they are found gradually to overlap Upper and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... sufferings and goodness they were emulated to deeper acts of love and piety. One day the wind blew very strongly through the open doorway, and the Sacred Heart began to sway to and fro. Getting more and more momentum with every oscillation, the heart finally struck against a sharp cornice, when lo—all the sawdust fell out of the canvas bag they had worshipped as the heart of flesh of their goddess. How they reconciled the existence of the heart of ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... seek. But so far I dare hazard a reply to the question—In what other sense can the words be interpreted?— beseeching you, however, to take what I am about to offer but as an attempt to delineate an arc of oscillation—that the eulogy of St. Paul is in nowise contravened by the opinion to which I incline, who fully believe the Old Testament collectively, both in the composition and in its preservation, a great and precious gift of Providence;— ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to ask it from a stranger, balanced as it were between reliance on her own pure and pleading beauty and doubtfulness of its reception. So she halted irresolute, with glorious throat that was hovering still over the swell of her lifted breasts, poised as it were on the very verge of tumultuous oscillation, like that of Rati, preparing with timidity to cast herself at the feet of the three-eyed God, to beg back the body of her burned-up husband in a passion ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... diameter. He started from an enclosure near North Audley Street, and descended after having been seven or eight minutes in the air. After cutting himself away, he floated over Marylebone and Somers Town, and fell in a field near St. Pancras Old Church. The oscillation was so great, that he was thrown out of the Parachute, and narrowly escaped death. He seemed a good deal frightened, and said that the peril was too great for endurance. One of the stays of the machine having given way, his danger was increased. ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... subjects, it was found, did not manifest sensitiveness to the same metals, some being cured by iron, others by copper, while the greatest number were susceptible to gold. Many interesting facts relating to these cures were noted, such as periods of transition and oscillation in the maladies, and most curious of all, a kind of transference. For example, should a paralysis or a contraction seat itself on the right side, the application of the discs would effect a cure, but the malady would often return to the opposite side. And there ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... not the high waves somewhat impeded her progress. Although only a moderate breeze was blowing, the sea was rough, a circumstance to be accounted for only by the diminution in the force of the earth's attraction rendering the liquid particles so buoyant, that by the mere effect of oscillation they were carried to a height that was quite unprecedented. M. Arago has fixed twenty-five or twenty-six feet as the maximum elevation ever attained by the highest waves, and his astonishment would have been very great to see them rising ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... whether he is really putting their clumsy thoughts into clearer phrases, or foisting showy nonsense upon them for his own purposes, or simply laughing at them in his sleeve. But, in a purely literary sense, this ambiguous hovering between two meanings, this oscillation between the ironical and the serious, is always amusing, and sometimes delightful. Some simple-minded people are revolted, even in literature, by the ironical method; and tell the humorist, with an air of moral disapproval, that ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... governor's heart died within him: he shivered with despair, his recollection forsaking him, he fell upon his knees in the bed, and, fixing his eyes upon the book which was in his hand, began to pronounce aloud with great fervour, "The time of a complete oscillation in the cycloid, is to the time in which a body would fall through the axis of the cycloid DV, as the circumference of a ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... indirection that puzzles the eye. Even on a windy winter day he rides the vast aerial billows as placidly as ever, rising and falling as he comes up toward you, carving his way through the resisting currents by a slight oscillation to the right and left, but never ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... be without effect. After some experimentation it was found that the best results were obtained by arranging the battering rams very near to the chain of buckets and by working the dredge and battering rams simultaneously. The advance at each oscillation was about 90 centimeters ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... lost her innocence, forgot what her own God was or had done for her, and ceased to enquire of Him. Hence her present vices and misery in contrast with her early troth and safety. Hence the twin evils of the time—on the one hand the nation's trust in heathen powers and silly oscillation between Egypt and Assyria; on the other the gross immoralities to which the Baals had seduced its sons. There was a double prostitution, to gods and to men, so foul that the young prophet uses the rankest ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... he placed the Ottoman power in Europe pretty nearly on that basis to which it had again fallen back by 1821. The long interval of time between these two dates involved a memorable flux and reflux of power, and an oscillation between two extremes of panic-striking grandeur, in the ascending scale (insomuch that the Turkish Sultan was supposed to be charged in the Apocalypse with the dissolution of the Christian thrones), and in the descending scale of paralytic dotage tempting its own instant ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... add, that the only ancient tertiary formation on the west coast of South America, which has been bulky enough to resist such degradation as it has as yet suffered, but which will hardly last to a distant geological age, was deposited during a downward oscillation of level, and ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... it is instructive to mark, in tracing the history of philosophic speculation, that its course resembles not so much the uniform current of a stream, as the alternate flowing and ebbing of the tide; or, if we may change the figure, that its movement may be likened to the oscillation of a pendulum, which no sooner reaches its highest elevation on the one side, than it acquires a tendency to rush to the opposite extreme on the other. There can be little doubt that the recent revival of speculative "Idealism" was the result, at least in part, of a strong reaction ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... for incorporation with the "faith."[465] The limits of the latter therefore seem to be indefinitely extended, whilst on the other hand tradition, and polemics too in many cases, demanded an adherence to the shortest formula. The oscillation between this brief formula, the contents of which, as a rule, did not suffice, and that fulness, which admitted of no bounds at all, is characteristic of the old Catholic Fathers we have mentioned. In the second place, these fathers ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... by the use of this exhauster are stated by M. Meizel to be the following: Considerably less motive force is necessary than is the case with other exhausters, which require steam engines and all the auxiliary mechanism for the transmission of power. By its quiet and regular action, it prevents oscillation and unsteadiness in the flow of gas in the hydraulic main, as well as in the pipes leading therefrom—a defect which has been found to exist with other exhausters. The bells, being of large area, serve the purpose of a condenser; and as, owing to its density, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... of Tennyson as though they were not merely stupid, but vulgar and almost wicked, neglectful of the fact that it was by persons exactly analogous to themselves that those portions of Tennyson were adored which the young repudiate to-day. Not to expand too largely this question of the oscillation of taste—which, however, demands more careful examination than it has hitherto received—it is always important to discover what was honestly admired at a given date by the most enthusiastic and intelligent, in other words by the most ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... memory. This was not merely visual, but emotional as well. Not only did it retain, with the precision of a photograph, all the little fleeting details of the confused and hurried hours in which the war began, but it kept a minute record of the oscillation of feeling. Those readers who take a pleasure in the technical parts of writing may enjoy an analysis of certain pages in "Ma Piece," for instance, the wonderful description of an alerte at 2 A.M. above the ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse |
