The Annual of Scientific Discovery, Or, Year-book of Facts in Science and Art, Volume 9

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Gould, Kendall, and Lincoln, 1859
 

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Page 118 - Droz: which latter, when performing, followed its hands with its eyes, and at the conclusion of the piece bowed courteously to the audience. That men like those mentioned, whose talent might bear comparison with the most inventive heads of the present age, should spend so much time in the construction of these figures, which we at present regard as the merest trifles, would be incomprehensible, if they had not hoped in solemn earnest to solve a great problem.
Page 134 - ... continuation of life is dependent on the consumption of nutritive materials: these are combustible substances, which, after digestion and being passed into the blood, actually undergo a slow combustion, and finally enter into almost the same combinations with the oxygen of the atmosphere that are produced in an open fire. As the quantity of heat generated by combustion is independent of the duration of the combustion and the steps in which it occurs, we can calculate from the mass of the consumed...
Page 195 - ... probably quite large enough to supply the wants of the human family to the end of its sojourn here. It has been calculated that an amount of condensation, which would diminish the diameter of the Sun by only the ten-thousandth part, would suffice to restore the heat emitted in 2000 years.
Page 126 - I have long held an opinion, almost amounting to conviction, in common I believe with many other lovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which the forces of matter are made manifest have one common origin; or, in other words, are so directly related and mutually dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, one into another, and possess equivalents of power in their action.
Page 126 - ... and having first made the acquaintance of Joule's experiments at the end of my investigation, followed the same path. I endeavoured to ascertain all the relations between the different natural processes, which followed from our regarding them from the above point of view. My inquiry was made public in 1847, in a small pamphlet bearing the title, "On the Conservation of Force.
Page 121 - The expenditure of force will in the first place, other circumstances being equal, be proportional to the weight of the hammer; it will, for example, be double when the weight of the hammer is doubled. But the action of the hammer depends not upon its weight alone, but also upon the height from which it falls. If it falls through two feet, it will produce a greater effect than if it falls through only one foot. It is, however, clear that if the machine, with a certain expenditure of force, lifts...
Page 131 - By the centrifugal force which must act most energetically in the neighborhood of the equator of the nebulous sphere, masses could from time to time be torn away, which afterwards would continue their courses separate from the main mass, forming themselves into single planets, or, similar to the great original sphere, into planets with satellites and rings, until finally the principal mass condensed itself into the sun. With regard to the origin of heat and light, this view gives us no information....
Page 126 - Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, motion, and chemical affinity, are all convertible material affections ; assuming either as the cause, one of the others will be the effect ; thus heat may be said to produce electricity, electricity to produce heat, magnetism to produce electricity, electricity magnetism, and so of the rest.