"Percussion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knew their temper better than he. With steady hand, made strong by sudden hope, the old gunner seized a priming-wire and picked the cartridge of one of the quarter guns; then he took from his pocket a percussion cap, fixed it in its place, and set back the hammer of the ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... to above in the ascending current, or the small oblique currents that we consider as opposing by a shock the propagation of the sonorous undulations. A shock given to the surface of a liquid will form circles around the centre of percussion, even when the liquid is agitated. Several kinds of undulations may cross each other in water, as in air, without being disturbed in their propagation: little movements may, as it were, ride over each other, and the real cause of the less intensity ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... curtain behind to protect his neck, a light-grey tunic belted at the waist, and a pair of strong canvas trousers. He had also purchased an old-fashioned double-barrelled fowling-piece, muzzle-loading and with percussion locks. ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... nucleus, nucleolus; heart, pole axis, bull's eye; nave, navel; umbilicus, backbone, marrow, pith; vertebra, vertebral column; hotbed; concentration &c. (convergence) 290; centralization; symmetry. center of gravity, center of pressure, center of percussion, center of oscillation, center of buoyancy &c.; metacenter[obs3]. V. be central &c. adj.; converge &c. 290. render central, centralize, concentrate; bring to a focus. Adj. central, centrical[obs3]; middle &c. 68; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Sun, stands on their pictorial rolls, as the symbol of the Great Spirit; and no important rite or ceremony is undertaken without an offering of tobacco. This weed is lit with the sacred element, generated anew on each occasion, from percussion. To light and to put out this fire, is the symbolic language for the opening and closing of every important civil or religious public transaction, and it is the most sacred rite known to them. It ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... of the Prussians, firing two rounds a minute with a percussion shell that broke into about 30 fragments, did much to defeat the French (1870-71). At Sedan, the greatest artillery battle fought prior to 1914, the Prussians used 600 guns to smother the French army. So thoroughly did these guns do their work that ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... oaken window-sill bright with fuchsias and geraniums, the walls adorned with an old eight-day clock, a copper warming-pan and antique trays, while over the mantel-piece was a small fowling piece, years ago reduced from flint to percussion. Upon the rafters there were half a side of bacon, bunches of dried sweet herbs, and the traditional strings of onions. The pictures consisted of four highly coloured prints of celebrated race-horses, long ago buried ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... by a tiny percussion-heated particle of the stone as it flies away under the sharp, glancing blow of the "steel" and catches in the dry cotton held by the thumb nail on the upper surface ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... and they, half supporting, had to go with him. From the drawer of the battered old table he drew the missing weapon to light, and it stood revealed—one of the famous Colt's 44, made soon after the Civil War to replace the percussion-capped "Navy" carried by most officers of the army until late in the '60's. In the hands of the cavalry at the moment, and for experimental purposes, were nickel-plated Smith and Wesson's of the same calibre, and nearly ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... A direct re-percussion of the Rome Conference was the great meeting which took place in Prague on May 16, on the occasion of the jubilee celebration of the foundation of the Czech ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... discovered that ten cents would buy a pound of cotton behind our army; that four cents would take it to Boston, where they could receive thirty cents in gold. The bait was too tempting, and it spread like fire, when here they discovered that salt, bacon, powder, fire-arms, percussion-caps, etc., etc., were worth as much as gold; and, strange to say, this traffic was not only permitted, but encouraged. Before we in the interior could know it, hundreds, yea thousands of barrels of salt and millions of dollars had been disbursed; and I have ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... work-basket, accidentally let fall a small pistol. She smiled and blushed, and presently acknowledged, that, when she had first pulled the trigger experimentally, six months before, she had shut her eyes and screamed, although there was only a percussion-cap to explode. Yet it afterwards appeared that she was one of the few women who remained in their houses, to protect them by their presence, when the town was entered by the Missourians,—and also one of the still ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... that by which we discover single causes. They may (first) be discovered as separate sequences, by separate sets of instances. One set of observations or experiments shows that the sun is a cause of heat, another that friction is a source of it, another that percussion, another that electricity, another that chemical action is such a source. Or (secondly) the plurality may come to light in the course of collating a number of instances, when we attempt to find some circumstance in which they all agree, and fail in doing so. We find it impossible ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... Ipres, or far earlier, he began; and has come down safe so far. Catapult has given place to cannon, pike has given place to musket, iron mail-shirt to coat of red cloth, saltpetre ropematch to percussion-cap; equipments, circumstances have all changed, and again changed: but the human battle-engine in the inside of any or of each of these, ready still to do battle, stands there, six feet in standard size. There are Pay-Offices, Woolwich Arsenals, there is a Horse-Guards, War-Office, Captain-General; ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... into the sap, and I've had it put into the fire-trench. I'm taking it back to blow it up. I think it's a percussion fuse, but it seems fairly safe. I've sent for a stretcher to carry ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... when the Delaware was filled with British shipping, that Bushnell set adrift upon its swift-flowing tide a number of small kegs, filled with gunpowder, and provided with percussion apparatus, so that contact with any object would explode them. The kegs were started on their voyage at night. But Bushnell had miscalculated the distance they had to travel; so that, instead of reaching the British fleet under ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... tumor.—In the application of this diagnosis the trained observer will note color, size, shape, and surface structure, transmission of light, movableness, consistence, resistance, pulsation, and crepitation. Percussion, auscultation, and exploration are also available methods. Finally, microscopic examination of the growing portions of the tumor by a pathologist ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... says the Governors of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Louisiana have already agreed to rendezvous at Raleigh, and others will—this in your most private ear. He says, further, that he had officially requested you to exchange with Virginia, on fair terms of difference, percussion for flint muskets. I don't know the usage or power of the department In such cases, but if it can be done, even by liberal construction, I hope you will accede. Was there not an appropriation at the last session for converting ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... order. "Clean up guns and lay on S.O.S. lines for the night," meaning to load the gun with a fuse shell timed for a certain range, or to burst on percussion, just as the target requires, safety catch down, sight set, range on range drum and the gun laid on a predetermined point to be covered, in both cases being the front line trench, although it might be a machine-gun emplacement, barbed-wire, ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... Adolph put the percussion cap in its place and started the mechanism. For a few moments its quiet tick-tick was the only sound heard in the room, the two bound men staring with wide-open eyes at the dial of the clock, while the whole horror of their position ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr |
