The Year-book of Facts in Science and Art |
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Page 5 - When Lord Brougham's eloquence in the Senate shall have passed away, and his services as a statesman shall exist only in the free institutions which they have helped to secure, his discourse on Natural Theology will continue to inculcate imperishable truths, and fit the mind for the higher revelations which these truths are destined to foreshadow and confirm.
Page 149 - It is evident that such a medium, on being agitated, would give out the note above mentioned ; while, on the other hand, if that note were sounded in air at a distance, the incident vibrations would throw the strings into vibration, and consequently would themselves be gradually extinguished, since otherwise there would be a creation of vis viva. The optical application of this illustration is too obvious to need comment.
Page 84 - The lamp is a delicate arrangement of machinery, holding the two carbons between which the electric light exists, and regulating their adjustment; so that whilst they gradually consume away, the place of the light shall not be altered. The electric wires end in the two bars of a small railway, and upon these the lamp stands. When the carbons of a lamp are nearly gone, that lamp is lifted off and another instantly pushed into its place. The machines and lamp have done their duty during the past six...
Page 185 - Paris, to dyeing wool and silk, and to printing calicoes, by the aid of oxide of lead and chloride of mercury as mordants; but the great obstacle to its extensive use was the difficulty of obtaining uric acid in sufficient quantity for its manufacture. The idea soon occurred to chemists to extract it from guano; and this is the curious source whence the chief supply of uric acid is obtained, and which enables Edmund Potter, Esq., and other printers, to produce the colour called Tyrian purple.
Page 8 - The Principia will ever remain a monument of the profound genius which revealed to us the greatest law of the universe,"* are the words of Laplace. " That work stands pre-eminent above all the other productions of the human mind. -(- " The discovery of that simple and general law by the greatness and the variety of the objects which it embraces confers honour upon the intellect of man.
Page 98 - ... varnish had been laid on to give a clearness of outline to each individual letter, and to protect the surface against the action of the elements. This varnish is of infinitely greater hardness than the limestone rock beneath it.
Page 202 - Darwin's theory was an explanation of facts ; and his book was full of new facts, all bearing on his theory. Without asserting that every part of the theory had been confirmed, he maintained that it was the best explanation of the origin of species which had yet been offered. With regard to the psychological distinction between man and animals ; man himself was once a monad — a mere atom, and nobody could say at what moment in the history of his development he became consciously intelligent.
Page 153 - Daniell. The carbon terminals of a battery of 40 cells of Grove were brought within one-eighth of an inch of each other, and the spark from a Leyden jar was sent across this space. This spark bridged with carbon particles the gap which had previously existed in the circuit, and the brilliant electric light due to the passage of the battery current was immediately displayed. 2. The magnified image of the coal points of an electric lamp was projected...
Page 75 - A reward of a single thousand would have supplied coaches and other vehicles, of various degrees of speed, with the best tackle for readily turning out ; and we might, ere this, have witnessed our...
Page 234 - ... physical geography of the country, comprising both the filling up with sediment and drift, and the partial reexcavation of the valley, have happened since old river-beds were, at some former period, the receptacles of the worked flints. The number of these last, already computed at above fourteen hundred in an area of fourteen miles in length and half a mile in breadth, has afforded to a succession of visitors abundant opportunities of verifying the true geological position of the implements.