"Propulsion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... playing with them at first, and doing no more than to ascertain their speed and power of propulsion, and had all along intended to reserve themselves for this triumph at the last. As soon as we reached the winning point, I rose up to give the cheer of victory, but just at that moment, they suddenly backed water with their paddles, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the horrors of starvation. I positively dreaded to think of what might be the effect of this upon the women; therefore, that we might not lie there absolutely helpless, I started to scull the boat with the steering oar. But she was heavy for this style of propulsion, and I estimated that our progress did not amount to more than three-quarters of a ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... galleon was a long slender ship of extremely low freeboard, rakish rigged as a single-master, both sails and oars being used as a means of propulsion; two small cannon were mounted forward, and a round dozen arquebuses were also carried. The total company and passengers of the three ships ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... of wandering too far from the center of things. He suddenly decided to double on his tracks and swing down to Chicago. Just why he felt as he did he could not fathom. But the feeling was there. It was an instinctive propulsion, a "hunch." These hunches were to him, working in the dark as he was compelled to, very much what whiskers are to a cat. They could not be called an infallible guide. But they at least kept ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... earthly standards. There were no windows, but at about every fifth floor there was an outer silver-railed balcony similar to the one on which they walked. The air was filled with bowl-shaped flying ships that sped over the roof tops in endless procession and without visible means of support or propulsion. Yet the general effect of the busy scene was one of precise orderliness, unmarred ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... weight on his hands. Fifth, he may stand too far away from the side of the horse, in which case he is liable to throw her over to the off side of the horse (as happened once to me), by giving her an oblique instead of a vertical propulsion. A minor form of this mistake is attempting to put the lady on the saddle, instead of raising her to the height at which she can easily take her seat. After a lady has suffered from clumsy attempts to put her up, it is not to be wondered at if she regards ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... narrowest and strongest form. That instinct, which Mazzini looked on as the means of raising in turn all the peoples of the world to the loftier plane of Humanity, was now to be the chief motive in the propulsion of the Juggernaut car of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... must be below," said Professor Prescott. "From what I have seen of experimental models, the propulsion impulse must ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... ourselves, or were sailing, in the sort of way that sailing is managed on the upper reaches of the river; but every now and then we came on barges, laden with hay or other country produce, or carrying bricks, lime, timber, and the like, and these were going on their way without any means of propulsion visible to me—just a man at the tiller, with often a friend or two laughing and talking with him. Dick, seeing on one occasion this day, that I was looking rather hard on one of these, said: "That is one of our force-barges; it is quite as easy to work vehicles by force ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... ignoring the plan suggested by Sir William Siemens of braking the train by converting the motor into a dynamo and thus utilizing the energy of momentum, he believed that the economy in fuel alone was sufficient to prove that the application of power by electricity was preferable to direct steam propulsion for the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... impression, except in a limited circle, that the problem was impossible of solution. In the meantime wondrous changes had taken place in the methods of transportation by land and sea. The steam and electric railway, steam propulsion of vessels, and mechanical movement along the highroads had been evolved and advanced to a high standard of perfection, to the untold advantage of the community. Consequently it was argued, if only a system of travel along the aerial highways could be established, then all other methods ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... was called, didn't advertise what sort of thing it was developing—but everybody knew that Lyman Dane was an expert on reactive propulsion of rocket motors. He could tell you—and frequently would without being asked—exactly what mass ratio, nozzle diameter and propulsive velocity would be needed for the first trip to the Moon. He knew how many hours a round trip would take, ...
— This is Klon Calling • Walt Sheldon
... to ride messages. He had notwithstanding had but little of the pleasure of speed for a long time, and when Dorothy at length gave him the rein, he flew as if every member of his body from tail to ears and eyelids had been an engine of propulsion. But Dorothy had more wings than Dick. Her whole being was full of wings. It was a small thing that she had not had a right gallop since she left Wyfern; the strength she had been putting forth to bear the Atlas burden that night lifted from ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... the air method of propulsion did away with the necessity of a large propellor such as most airships have to use, a propellor which must of necessity be very light ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... capital and distance of most of our ports from the markets supplied by European manufactures, for a long time to come make the home-supply the chief care of our artisans. They have, for such and other reasons, in some points lost ground of late. The revolution in the propulsion and construction of ships, for instance, has not found them prepared to take the advantage they have usually done of improvements. Not only do the British screw-steamers take undisputed possession of our trade with their own country, but they expel our once unrivaled craft from the harbors ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... was for some distance without vegetation. Here the two men grappled. There was some hard squeezing, some quick bending either way, a final powerful forcing forward of the arms on the part of Blaise, a last violent propulsion of the same arms, and Barbemouche was thrown backward down the precipice. Blaise stood for a time looking oven. We heard a series of dull concussions, a sound of the flight of detached small stones, and ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... first time for boring purposes the newly developed atomic disintegrators. Many holes equally spaced over the sphere were the outlets for the dissolving ray—most of them on the bottom and alternating with them on the bottom and sides were the outlets of powerful rocket propulsion tubes, which would enable it to rise easily from the hole it would presently blast into the earth. A small, tight-fitting door gave entrance to the double-walled interior, where, in spite of the space ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... to convince himself that this interest in guns and marksmanship had any sinister propulsion back of it. His father and brothers had always been this way. Rifles were as important to pioneers as plows, and their skillful use was an achievement every frontiersman tried to attain. Friendly rivalry had always existed among the members of ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... second, the already existing Western empire of Europe must be rounded out by the "regulation" of Spanish affairs—the appropriation, if it should seem best, of the whole Iberian peninsula. Any tyro in geography could see by a glance at the map that as navigation was in those days—that is, by the propulsion of fickle winds amid the partly known currents of ocean and sea—the command of Gibraltar and Malta meant the control of the Levant, and the British held both places. With Spain in French hands, Gibraltar eventually might be taken, but the case of Malta was far different. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... covering of goat-skin, with the hair inside. The thing was extremely small, even for me, and I can hardly imagine that it could have floated with a full-sized man. There was one thwart set as low as possible, a kind of stretcher in the bows, and a double paddle for propulsion. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... You have one available now? Good. I'll want some alterations made on one. For one thing, I'll want it plated heavily, all over, with collapsed nickel. For another, I'll want it fitted with antigrav units and some sort of propulsion-units, and a loud-speaker, and ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... forward stride, however, was made when the idea was first conceived of a steam-turbine and a water-turbine being fixed on the same shaft and the latter being used for the propulsion of a vessel at sea. In this case it is obvious that, by a suitable adjustment of the pitch of screw adopted in both cases, a nice mathematical agreement between the vapour power and the liquid application of that power ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... admitting the steam alternately at both ends of the cylinder, it was too awkward and clumsy to become a practical navigator. Moreover, though it could pump admirably, it had not been taught to turn a crank. The French assert, that experiments in steam-propulsion were made on the Seine, by Count Auxiron and Perrier, in 1774, and on the Saone, by De Jouffroy, in 1782; but we know they led to no practical results, and the knowledge of them probably did not, for some years, travel beyond the limits of the French language. There ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Marie looked over the guard-rail and saw that the driver had left his place and was kneeling in the dust beside the car peering at its underworks. The conductor strolled round to him after a moment and stood indifferently by, remarking upon the strange vicissitudes to which electrical propulsion is subject. The driver, without looking up, called his colleague a number of the most surprising and, it is to be hoped, unwarranted names, and suddenly began to burrow under the tram, wriggling his way after the manner of ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... side of the ship opened, and a dozen spacesuited men leaped out. The propulsion units in their hands guided them toward ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... to exercise their hearts. Narrow natures expand by persecuting as much as others through beneficence; they prove their power over their fellows by cruel tyranny as others do by loving kindness; they simply go the way their temperaments drive them. Add to this the propulsion of self-interest and you may read the enigma of most ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... canoe was approaching, still gliding noiselessly over the water, without any apparent power of propulsion, and in it were seated two men. One had a long white beard and a profusion of white hair. He was dressed entirely in white, and sat in the stern of the canoe. The other was Captain Justin Bellwood, quite unharmed, and looking ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... were cut through the forest. They were narrow roads adown which hogsheads of tobacco, fitted with axles, could be drawn or rolled from inland plantations to the river or bay side; sometimes the hogsheads were simply rolled by human propulsion, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... reference to the passage of a ship from the river Fulda into the Weser;" the other is in the handwriting of Leibnitz: "Papin's sidewheel ship." This last indorsement is of great value, as indicating the fact that Papin proposed to apply side wheels for the propulsion of his new invention. The following is a translation of Leibnitz' letter, the original of which I saw ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... will support our hopes. What will fascinate us in the past will be the records of inventions, of great choices, of those alternatives on which destiny seems to hang. The splendid epochs will be interpreted as monuments of man's creation, not of his propulsion. We shall be interested primarily in the way nations established their civilization in spite of hostile conditions. Admiration will go out to the men who did not submit, who bent things to human use. We may see the entire tragedy of ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... the Sea Hound, latest and largest model of Tom's amazing diving seacopter. It had an enclosed central rotor, powered by atomic turbines, with reversible-pitch blades for air lift or undersea diving. Superheated steam jets provided forward propulsion in either element. ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... o'clock; when my uncle, myself, the guide, two other passengers and the four horses, trusted ourselves to a somewhat fragile raft. Accustomed as I was to the swift and sure steamers on the Elbe, I found the oars of the rowers rather a slow means of propulsion. It took us more than an hour to cross the fiord; but the passage ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... in the gravity propulsion plates too," Carse said shortly. "Their adjustment's been ruined by it, and we're out of control, turning over and over. I couldn't possibly see Judd. Well, we've got to go down to the plates and try and ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... anything worth while in accepted theories of the conversion and conservation of force these gigantic energies are by no means wasted; they appear as heat, light and electricity, modifying climate, reducing gas bills and assisting in propulsion of street cars. Even in baying the moon and insulting visitors and bypassers the dog releases a certain amount of vibratory force which through various mutations of its wave-length, may do its part in cooking a steak or ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... provided with a couple of old cart-wheels, in a hole in the ice. One wheel acts as a turning base and prevents the shaft from sinking into the pond, and the other forms a support for the long sweep attached for propulsion purposes, and should be fastened to the shaft about 3 ft. above the base wheel. The sleds are made fast in a string to the long end of the sweep, which when turned rapidly causes the sleds to slide over the ice in a ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... the first man successfully to apply the power of the steam-engine to the propulsion of boats. Everyone has heard the story of how, years before, the youthful James Watt first got his idea of the power of steam by noticing how it rattled the lid on his mother's boiling teakettle. From that came the stationary engine, and from that the engine as applied to the locomotive. ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... itself, binding it up with wrought-iron hoops, and then surrounding it with a thick mass of stone and cement masonry. When it is cast it must be bored with great precision so as to prevent windage, so there will be no loss of gas, and all the expansive force of the powder will be employed in the propulsion." ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... valuable platinum in Siberia, Tom started for that lonely place, and, to reach a certain part of if, he had to invent a new machine, called an air glider. It was an aeroplane without means of propulsion save the wind. ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... Besides the emission of it is accompanied with a peculiar species of tension and convulsion of the whole frame, which is always succeeded by relaxation. For the same reason, even libidinous thoughts, without any loss of semen, are debilitating, though in a less degree, by occasioning a propulsion ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... conception was as transitional and inadequate as the methods and ideas of the practical movers, who were to a man left stranded in every country in Europe, during the period of his poetic activity. A transitional and unstable movement of society inevitably fails to supply a propulsion powerful enough to make its poetic expression eternal. There is no better proof of the enormous force of Byron's genius than that it was able to produce so fine an expression of elements so intrinsically unfavourable to high ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... claim to fame arises from his endeavours to introduce steam-power as an agent in the propulsion of ships at sea. Mr. Clerk of Eldin had already invented the system of "breaking the line" in naval engagements—a system that was first practised with complete success by Lord Rodney in his engagement off Martinico ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... much care where it lifts or sets down, since its method of propulsion isn't trying to work against the fabric of space itself. For that reason, an interstellar vessel is normally built in space and stays there, using ion rockets for loading and unloading its passengers. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... there ready to hand. I boarded one of the empty barges in the backwater, and surveyed my quarters for the night. It was of a similar pattern to all the others I had seen; a lighter, strictly, in the sense that it had no means of self-propulsion, and no separate quarters for a crew, the whole interior of the hull being free for cargo. At both bow and stern there were ten feet or so of deck, garnished with bitts and bollards. The rest was an open well, flanked by waterways of substantial breadth; the whole of stout construction ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... instead of palmated feet, have what is called the lobate foot, which means that the digits have broad lobes or flaps on their sides. While in such cases the toes are all distinct, the expanded lobes serve almost, if not quite, as good a purpose for propulsion in the water as do the webs. The coot swims almost as well as the duck or the goose, and at the same time his feet, with their disconnected toes, are better adapted for paddling about amid the watergrass and dense weeds than if they ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... admitted Leou, restraining his narrow-minded impatience; "and with an ordinary number of written charms worn about the head and body they would doubtless carry you through the lesser contingencies of existence. But by, as it were, extending contempt, you have invited the retaliatory propulsion of the sandal ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... in imminent danger; we had out all the firearms we could muster; these amounted to two rifles, two shot guns, and five revolvers. I watched with great keenness the motion of their arms that gives the propulsion to their spears, and the instant I observed that, I ordered a discharge of the two rifles and one gun, as it was no use waiting to be speared first. I delayed almost a second too long, for at the instant I gave the word several spears had left the enemy's hands, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... chief gains little or nothing in the shape of material reward. He may receive a little voluntary assistance in the cultivation of his field; in travelling by boat he is accorded the place of honour and ease in the middle of the boat, and he is not expected to help in its propulsion. His principal rewards are the social precedence and deference accorded him and the satisfaction found ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... types may be said to embrace all the engines now being manufactured in this country for the propulsion of steam vessels by the screw propeller. In their leading principles they also embrace nearly all paddle engines now being built, whether the cylinders be oscillating, fixed vertically, or inclined ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... Hardin, as he sees these dazzling rockets rise, with golden trails, into the social darkness of the Western skies, "they are really the upper classes here. Their power of propulsion to the zenith is inherent in themselves. If they mingle, in time, with the aristocratic noblesse of Europe, they may infuse a certain picturesque element." Hardin realizes that some of the children of these millionnaires of a day will play at school with ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... tonic north wind, the sunshine, the sparkle of the water, the gay lines of bunting flickering from stem to stern of the Committee Ship, the invigorating blare of the Troy Town Band, now throwing its soul into "Champagne Charlie," the propulsion of the oars that seemed to snatch her and sweep her forward past wondering faces to high destiny— all these were wings, and lifted her spirit with them. She began to under stand what it must feel like to be a Queen, or (at least) a Prime ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... no heed to this observation; he seemed to be thinking of something. After a moment he said, 'If you'll come and see us in town she'll show you the vase.' And as they passed into the drawing-room he gave the artist a friendly propulsion. 'Go and speak to her; there she is—she'll ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James |
