A history of wonderful inventions

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Chapman and Hall, 1849 - 125 pages

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Page 106 - We should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's ricochet rockets, as trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine going at such a rate.
Page 120 - ... and that could we draw aside the mysterious curtain which shrouds it from our senses, we might there see a theatre of as many wonders as astronomy has unfolded, a universe within the compass of a point so small, as to elude all the powers of the microscope, but where the wonder-working God finds room for the exercise of all his attributes, where he can raise another mechanism of worlds, and fill and animate them all with the evidences of his glory.
Page 106 - Achromatic Lenses. The color effect caused by the chromatic aberration of a simple lens greatly impairs its usefulness.
Page 111 - I then filled a good many bladders therewith, and might have filled an inconceivable number more, for the spirit continued to rise for several hours, and filled the bladders almost as fast as a man could have blown them with his mouth: and yet the quantity of coals distilled was inconsiderable.
Page 44 - Europe, till the discovery of the passage to the East by the Cape of Good Hope...
Page 48 - There was exhibited on it a negro, a shepherd, and a dog. When the clock struck, the shepherd played six tunes on his flute, and the dog approached and fawned upon him. This clock was exhibited to the king of Spain, who was greatly delighted with it. " The gentleness of my dog," said Droz,
Page 120 - The one has suggested to me that beyond and above all that is visible to man there may be fields of creation which sweep immeasurably along, and carry the impress of the Almighty's hand to the remotest scenes of the universe...
Page 77 - As I had occasion to pass daily to and from the building-yard while my boat was in progress, I have often loitered unknown near the idle groups of strangers, gathering in little circles, and heard various inquiries as to the object of this new vehicle. The language was uniformly that of scorn, or sneer, or ridicule. The loud laugh often rose at my expense ; the dry jest; the wise calculations of losses and expenditures; the dull but endless repetition of the Fulton Folly.
Page 12 - I have seen the water run like a constant fountain stream, forty feet high ; one vessel of water, rarified by fire, driveth up forty of cold water. And a man that tends the work is but to turn two cocks, that one vessel of water being consumed, another begins to force and refill with cold water, and so successively, the fire being tended and kept constant, which the self-same person may likewise abundantly perform in the interim, between the necessity of turning the said cocks.
Page 120 - The one taught me that this mighty globe, with the whole burden of its people and its countries, is but a grain of sand on the high field of immensity...

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