"Theodolite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the embroidered bag. 'That must be from Hilas or Bunar, and Hurree Babu spoke truth. By Jove! It is a fine haul. I wish Hurree could know ... The rest must go out of the window.' He fingered a superb prismatic compass and the shiny top of a theodolite. But after all, a Sahib cannot very well steal, and the things might be inconvenient evidence later. He sorted out every scrap of manuscript, every map, and the native letters. They made one softish slab. The three locked ferril-backed books, with five worn pocket-books, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... wooded as to deprive us of the view we had anticipated; but, as there were some openings in the trees through which a few distant objects could be distinguished, we made preparations to take their bearings, and while the boat's crew were landing the theodolite, our party were amusing themselves on the top ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... for simple convenience, as they put handles on shovels. Such names, of course, are meaningless. The day for inventing names is past, or seems so. We beg or borrow, as the surveyor who marched across the State of New York, with theodolite and chain and a classical atlas, and blazed his way with Rome, and Illyria, and Syracuse, and Ithaca,—a procedure at once meaningless and dense. Greece nor Rome feels at home ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... them. As one of the chainmen was climbing over a gate one day, a labourer made at him with a pitchfork, and ran it through his clothes into his back; other watchers running up, the chainman, who was more stunned than hurt, took to his heels and fled. But that mysterious-looking instrument—-the theodolite—-most excited the fury of the natives, who concentrated on the man who carried it their fiercest ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... spectra of the moon and planets are practically nothing but faint reproductions of the spectrum of the sun was discovered by the great German optician Fraunhofer about the year 1816. By placing a prism in front of the object glass of a small theodolite (an instrument used for geodetic measurements) he was able to ascertain that Venus and Mars showed the same spectrum as the sun, while Sirius gave a very different one. This important observation encouraged him to procure better ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... of which I speak can be seen everywhere in a comparison between the ancient and universal things and the modern and specialist things. The object of a theodolite is to lie level; the object of a stick is to swing loose at any angle; to whirl like the very wheel of liberty. The object of a lancet is to lance; when used for slashing, gashing, ripping, lopping off heads and limbs, it is a disappointing instrument. ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... made for better things than for cotton-picking or plantation work, and handed him over to their surveyor, who needed a man to help him. I used often to meet him after this, tripping at his master's heels with the theodolite, or scampering about with tapes and chains like a kitten with a spool of thread. He did not look then as though he were destined to die of a broken heart, though that was his end not so many months afterward. The plantation ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... being a professed investigator, I carried with me no scientific instruments, except sometimes a common thermometer: I had no leisure for making excavations, for taking angles with a theodolite, or attending to the delicate care of any kind of barometer, being employed on my ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... and somehow connect them, in the backs of their silly old heads, with food and rest. Weary Willie made a decided improvement, so we camped in high spirits. Captain Scott had asked me if possible to take some theodolite observations for the determination of the position of Bluff Camp. Ours is much farther off and farther beyond the Bluff than the old Discovery Depot A, which was practically the same position Shackleton used. In both cases, Scott and Shackleton were keeping nearer the coast; ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... seriously, which would have implied that we did not fully understand the situation, he professed to be greatly amused, and said it reminded him of the case of an old lady in "Punch" who had to pass a surveyor in the street, behind a theodolite. "Please, sir, don't shoot till ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, he said: "You have not, like an ordinary explorer, made a common route survey, but you have made a scientific survey, a triangulation frequently checked by astronomical observations with theodolite and chronometer." ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... eternally changing. The sand is continually silting, and a khamseen may alter the whole surface of the land, yet to the eye it remains substantially the same. It is only when you come to study the desert in terms of the theodolite, so to speak, that you discover its mutability; that which is a hill to-day may be a ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett |
