"Electricity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the identity of lightning and electricity, it was sneered at, and people asked, "Of what use is it?" To which his reply was, "What is the use of a child? It may become a man!" When Galvani discovered that a frog's leg twitched when placed in contact with different metals, it could scarcely have been imagined that so apparently ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... not be strictly accurate to say that at the close of the nineteenth century the Spaniards of Manila were using the same tortures that had made their name abhorrent in Europe three centuries earlier, for there was some progress; electricity was employed at times as an improved method of causing anguish, and the thumbscrews were much more neatly finished than those used by the Dons of ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... School of Fine Arts hangs a portrait of Mrs. De Forest, and in the New York City Hall one of Lafayette, both of them from his brush, and both not unworthy the best traditions of American art. But a chance conversation about electricity turned his thoughts in that direction, and he abandoned painting for invention—the result being the electric telegraph. We shall speak of him further ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... left his laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the furnace smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers, and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife. In those days when the comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other kindred mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of miracle, it was not unusual for the love of science to rival the love of woman in its depth and absorbing energy. The higher intellect, the imagination, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Irish Times (Dublin, 1884): "It is not generally known that the country people along the line of the electric railway make strange uses of the insulated rails, which are the medium of electricity on this tramway, in connection with one of which an extraordinary and very remarkable occurrence is reported. People have no objection to touch the rail and receive a smart shock, which is, however, harmless, at least so far. On Thursday evening ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... streets are regular and spacious and lighted by electricity. Many of its dwellings and business houses are also equipped with electric lighting facilities, power for which is generated at a plant located near Belmont, on Goose Creek, and controlled by Leesburg capitalists. ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... that day the Connors family found a devoted friend. Henceforth the Rose-lady took a special interest in Ellie. She induced a celebrated doctor to go and see her. The great man said there was a chance that the crippled child might be cured by electricity; and it was arranged that the mother should take her regularly to his office for treatment, Mrs. M—— offering the use of ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... Harry, working while he talked. "You see, the motor itself can't be hurt unless you take an axe to it, and break it all up! But to start you've got to have a spark—and you get that from electricity. So there are these little wires that make the connection. He didn't cut them, thank Heaven! He just disconnected them. If he'd cut them I might really have been up a tree because that's the sort of accident you wouldn't provide for ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... special committee of an association of electrical engineers, given at its convention in Philadelphia, furnished a writer with material for an article on "Farming by Electricity," that was published in the Sunday edition of ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... inventions that were in my brain was an instrument for detecting the presence of gold similar to the instrument called a compass. In this instance electricity had nothing to ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Government solve this problem by having many of the existing electrical plants turn partly to recovering nitrogen from the atmosphere. This, they say, could be done without reducing the present production of electricity for ordinary purposes, since only 19 per cent. of the effective capacity of the 2,000,000 horse power producible by the electrical plants of Germany is actually used. The supply of phosphoric fertilizers is also endangered through the stoppage of imports of phosphate rock (nearly 1,000,000 ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... electricity has not a more instantaneous effect than these words produced on me. Leaping behind Mademoiselle de G——, I trembled with joy, and when it became necessary to clasp her in order to hold myself on, my heart beat so violently that she perceived it, and told me hers beat ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... is a very strong fellow; for, with the help of gunpowder, he will break the granite mountain in pieces, and carry it away. He works in the other mills, and takes heavy loads of stone, cloth, paper, and wood all over the country. Then, on the right of us is a third giant, called Electricity. He runs along those wires, and carries messages from one end of the world to the other. He goes under the sea and through the air; he brings news to every one; runs day and night, yet never tires; and often helps sick people with his ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... faith in the future of oil!" he cries, in the midst of a sober statistical letter, "Why! that is as unthinkable as to lose faith in your hands. Oil, coal, electricity, what are these but multiplied and more adaptable, super-serviceable hands? They may temporarily be unemployed, but the world can't go round without them." A man who feels poetry in petroleum suffers from no wistful "desire of the moth for the star." To his full sense of life the moth and the ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... of commercial expansion which, as the concomitant of our active civilization, day by day is being urged onward by those increasing facilities of production, transportation, and communication to which steam and electricity have given birth; but our duty in the present instructs us to address ourselves mainly to the development of the vast resources of the great area committed to our charge and to the cultivation of the arts of peace within our own borders, though ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... clear, cold, sunshiny day—one of those days so peculiar to the Southern climate, when the blood hounds through every vein as if thrilled by electricity, and a man of lively temperament can scarcely restrain his legs from dancing a 'breakdown.' We rode rapidly on through a timbered country, where the tall trees grew up close by the roadside, locking their huge arms high in the air, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... extended, without material change or improvement, to a period but two or three hundred years ago. The present age has entered upon a new era; it has added a series of wonderful inventions to the Atlantean list; it has subjugated steam and electricity to the uses of man. And its work has but commenced: it will continue until it lifts man to a plane as much higher than the present as the present is above the barbaric condition; and in the future it will be said ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... to use a jet of compressed air, shooting out from a rear tube, nor yet a jet of water, by means of which the creature called the squid shoots himself along. Mr. Swift planned to send the Advance along under water by means of electricity. ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... was sitting in her peignoir during her morning toilette, she commanded her hair to be combed.... And what do you think? The lady-in-waiting passed the comb through, and sparks of electricity simply showered out! Then she summoned to her presence the court physician Rogerson, who happened to be in waiting at the court, and said to him: 'I am, I know, censured for certain actions; but do you see this ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... admiration; but yet I am oppressed: the reader is scarcely ever permitted a taste of unalloyed pleasure; every beam of sunshine is poured down through black bars of threatening cloud; every page is surcharged with a sort of moral electricity; and the writer was unconscious of all this—nothing could make ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... magnetism and electricity are imperceptible to our sight, though they may be registered by the appropriate apparatus; and if we had the proper sense of apparatus to perceive them, these rays of vibratory force would open up a whole new world to us. Likewise, if we could increase our ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... When it grows dark the whole place is lit by electricity, and the concrete continues to pour in just the same. It is wonderful then—like the mouth of a volcano. Batteries of search-lights play upon the men; the whole sky is like a furnace. You can see it for miles. Now I think we had better go back ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... through his body from his head to his feet, like a current of electricity, and he caught his breath as though he had been struck. For one brief instant the sinister face of some one who had terrified him in the past came back vividly to his mind, and he shrank away in terror. ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... messengers were put into rapid requisition. The bridal suite was placed at the disposal of the young ladies for a dressing-room. The attendant genii surpassed themselves. The evening dresses of Maruja, Amita, and the Misses Wilson, summoned by electricity from La Mision Perdida, and dispatched by the fleetest conveyances, were placed in the arms of their maids, smothered with bouquets, an hour before dinner. An operatic concert troupe, passing through ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... the undulatory theory of light,—ideas which had germinated two hundred years ago in the lofty minds of Huygens and Hooke. Since then have been discovered the polarization and interference of heat, the triple constitution of the solar ray, the identity of magnetism and electricity, the polar nature of chemical affinity, the optical polarities of crystals, and the interaction of magnetism and light. Since then the once meagre and fragmentary science of physics has become one of the grandest and richest departments of human thought; and ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... gardens on our way, and passing up some of the principal streets, we saw something of the greatness and attractiveness of the city. The station is quite a busy terminus, like Euston, or the Midland—a fine building, and brilliantly lighted up at night by electricity, two lamps outside illuminating the park-like piazza. The tramway omnibuses (which are not propelled by steam, as at Florence), move about as briskly as in London; they are, however, more neatly and comfortably ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... if a man tried to produce an electric burner according to laws of his own devising, and then sat down and pitied himself because the light would not burn, instead of searching about until he had found the true laws of electricity whose application would make the light shine successfully. How ridiculous it would seem if a man tried to make water run up hill without providing that it should do so by reaching its own level, and then got indignant because he did not succeed, and wondered if there were not some "cure" by means ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... is a private entrance for the seigneurs. The interior arrangements in some of the old ones leave much to be desired in the way of comfort and modern improvements,—lighting very bad, neither gas nor electricity, and I should think no baths anywhere, hardly a tub. On the banks of the Seine and the Loire, near the great forests, in all the departments near Paris there are quantities of chateaux—some just on the border of the highroad, separated from it by high iron gates, through which ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... "Well, you know that electricity does queer things," declared the chaperone. "It might easily cause flickering lights, though I'm not saying but that some one has ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... each one sprang to his feet as if moved by electricity. A sort of smoke was clearly rising ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... modern convenience being brought into use, providing accommodation for a delivery system of hundreds of horses and wagons used daily in delivering goods in the city and suburbs. Heated throughout with steam, lighted by electricity, and electric power applied to rotary brushes for grooming, hydraulic elevator service capable of lifting tons of feed and grain to upper floors, basement fitted up with complete blacksmith shop for horse shoeing, ...
— How Department Stores Are Carried On • W. B. Phillips
... reluctance to enter into a theological discussion with Amanda was great, and his answers to that indefatigable she bore rather curt and ironical. After a good deal of conversation about the weather, crops, the telegraph, railroads, thunder storms, electricity, and such other subjects as were suggested by the climate and state of the weather, Mr. Prying left the room, wondering where this priest got his knowledge, and how could he be one of that low, canting, Scripture-phrase class to which all ministers he ever knew belonged, and in which ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... modern farm kitchen hot and cold water gushes from bright nickel taps into a clean white enamel sink, thanks to the pneumatic water supply system. The house and other farm buildings are lighted by electricity and perhaps the little farm power plant manages to operate some machinery—to drive the washing machine, the cream separator, the churn and the fodder-cutter or tanning-mill. There is also a little blacksmith shop and a carpenter shop where repairs can be attended to without delay. True, all ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... perhaps the best of his time, Franklin acquired by the diligent and repeated analysis of the Spectator. In a life crowded with labors, he found time to read widely in natural science and to win single-handed recognition at the hands of European savants for his discoveries in electricity. By his own efforts he "attained an acquaintance" with Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish, thus unconsciously preparing himself for the day when he was to speak for all America at the court of the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... calcite than basalt,' I said. I touched it and withdrew my hand quickly for at the contact every nerve in my arm tingled as though a shock of frozen electricity had passed through it. It was not cold as we know cold. It was a chill force—the phrase I have used—frozen electricity—describes it better than anything else. Stanton ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... glanced westward. It was yet an hour lacking of sundown, but since mid-morning Dozier had been able to send his messages so far and so wide. Andrew set his teeth. What did cunning of head and speed of horse count against the law when the law had electricity ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... only five blocks east. Beyond this door there's a mysterious magic tunnel that runs straight through the house to Somebody's back-yard. And in the back-yard is a castle and in the castle studios and skylights, electricity and steam heat and wide, old-fashioned fireplaces. Once it was a tenement—just like this with fifty dirty people in it—but Ann with her magic ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... King feel homesick, for out of the mountain's very womb brayed a music-box, such as the old-time carousels made use of before the days of electricity and steam. It was being worked by inexpert hands, for the time was something jerky; but it was robbed of its tinny meanness and even majesty by the hugeness of a cavern's roof, as well as by the crashing, swinging march it played— wild -wonderful—invented ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... sciences, from an early period, have found able investigators in the United States. Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) successfully applied his knowledge to increase the convenience, economy, and comfort of mankind. Franklin's discoveries in electricity, the most brilliant which had yet been made, have been followed by those of Morse, whose application of that power to the telegraphic wire is one of the most wonderful achievements of modern science. Fitch and Fulton were the first to apply ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... about them like St. Elmo's fire, witch lights—condensations of atmospheric electricity," Ventnor's voice was calm; now that it was plain we were nearing the heart of this mystery in which we were enmeshed he had clearly taken fresh grip, was ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... the average man, free and full of honour, voluntarily invoking on his own sin the just vengeance of his city. All else we have done is mere machinery for that: railways exist only to carry the Citizen; forts only to defend him; electricity only to light him, medicine only to heal him. Popularism, the idea of the people alive and patiently feeding history, that we cannot give; for it exists everywhere, East and West. But democracy, the idea of the people ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... at the works till ten and sometimes till eleven. But I have a nice office to sit in, with a fire to myself, and bright brass scientific instruments all round me, and books to read, and experiments to make, and enjoy myself amazingly. I find the study of electricity so entertaining that I am apt to neglect my other work.' And for a last taste, 'Yesterday I had some charming electrical experiments. What shall I compare them to - a new ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... $228 million (f.o.b., 1996 est.) commodities: asphalt, metals and metallic ores, electricity, crude oil, vegetables, fruits, tobacco partners: ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... deal better off in this new country than the people in Europe; but we are not in respect of cab horses, for in London and Paris they last for five years. I have seen horses drop down dead in New York just from hard usage. Poor brutes, there is a better time coming for them though. When electricity is more fully developed, we'll see some wonderful changes. As it is, last year in different places, about thirty thousand horses were released from those abominable horse cars, by having electricity introduced on the roads. Well, Fleetfoot, do you want ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... by the characters and conversation of such visitors. And let it not be overlooked that this was the time of Poland's intellectual renascence—a time when the influence of man over man is greater than at other times, he being, as it were, charged with a kind of vivifying electricity. The misfortunes that had passed over Poland had purified and fortified the nation—breathed into it a new and healthier life. The change which the country underwent from the middle of the eighteenth to the earlier part of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Electricity was in the air by morning. There were all sorts of sparks. Young men in civilian clothes ran for trams with their hands over their hip pockets. A delightful girl whom I had met, boarded my car with a heavy parcel ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... moments to touch, he, in marked contrast to other mystics, refuses to call God. For, he says, what we understand by deity is the purest form of mind, and he sees no mind in nature. It is a force without a mind, "more subtle than electricity, but absolutely devoid of consciousness and with no more feeling than the force which lifts the tides."[26] Yet this cannot content him, for later he declares there must be an existence higher than deity, towards which he aspires and presses ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... struggle began with the kindling of the first fire. The domestication of animal life marked another great step in the long ascent. The capture of the great physical forces, the discovery of coal and mineral oil, of gas, steam and electricity, and their adaptation to the everyday uses of mankind, wrought the greatest changes in the course of civilization. With the discovery of radium and radioactivity, with the recognition of the vast stores of physical energy concealed in the atom, humanity is now on the ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... the County of Sussex, on the 4th of August, 1792. His most characteristic childish amusement seems to have been the making of chemical experiments; and his brothers and sisters were often terrified at the experiments in electricity which he tried upon them. He was also fond of making the children personate spirits or fiends, while he ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... most of these visionaries are occupied with electricity. They intend to make the lightning a domestic slave in every house, and to turn Ariel into a common carrier. But, from the aspect of Winter's den in Paterson's Rents, it was easy to read that his heart ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... steam-yacht? No—there is not a smokestack about her. Is she propelled by electricity—by a battery of accumulators, or by piles of great power that work her screw and send her along ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... produced at least two men whose fame had crossed the sea,—Edwards, who out of the grim theology of Calvin mounted to sublime heights of mystical speculation; and Franklin, famous already by his discoveries in electricity. On the other hand, there were few genuine New Englanders who, however personally modest, could divest themselves of the notion that they belonged to a people in an especial manner the object of divine approval; and this self-righteousness, along with certain ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... sentiment of regret in breaking with the anticipations of the good time coming. It must be so for all conditions of men. Have we not still to look forward, as we pass out of the age of steam into the more subtle and wonderful age of electricity, to a time when there may be greater wonders yet in store! And so to every man who reaps a harvest from other men's labours comes the old lesson of the responsibility for continuing ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... modern—Maps, the Projection of the Sphere—Algebra, the Use of the Globes, Natural and Moral Philosophy, Pneumatics, Optics, Dioptics, Catroptics, Hydraulics, Erostatics, Geology, Glorification, Divinity, Mythology, Medicinality, Physic, by theory only, Metaphysics practically, Chemistry, Electricity, Galvanism, Mechanics, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... and studied therein the ponderous manoeuvres of an ancient fish, believed by the people thereabouts to be something over two hundred years old. Carp had a great charm for Lord Kingsmead; so had electricity; so had toads; so had buns, and stable-boys, and pianolas, and armour, and curates, ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... when Janice opened her eyes she was in the barroom. The proprietor of the Inn slammed to the door against the thunderous rush of the breaking storm. The rain dashed in torrents against the house. The blue flashes of electricity streaked the windows constantly, while the roll and roar of the thunder almost deafened those in the ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... us fear (actually fear) people who differ from ourselves, either up or down the scale. Your Edison pries fearlessly into the intimate secrets of matter; your Marconi employs the mysterious properties of the "jellied ether," but let a man seek to experiment with the laws of that singular electricity which connects you and me (though you be a millionaire and I a ditch-digger), and we think him a wild visionary, an academic person. I think sometimes that the science of humanity to-day is in about the state of darkness that the natural sciences were when ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... and apple-butter stage of our hero's career may seem to dim the lustre of the later porterhouse steak, but with all the glory of the halcyon days of yore it is to be noted that he rides in an automobile and not in an ox-cart, and prefers electricity to the ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... "Now don't start as if you had a shock of it. That's what I used. When I was younger than I was then, and sometimes visited friends in the city, we often amused ourselves by rubbing our feet on the carpet until we got ourselves so full of electricity that we could put up our fingers and light the gas. So I said to myself that if I could get full of electricity for the purpose of lightin' the gas I could get full of it for other purposes, and so, without losin' a moment, I set to work. I stood up ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... things; and I never go into the laboratory when he is there; so I do not know whether Marian lets him be familiar with her or not. She is rather easygoing; and he is insufferably conceited. However, if she wants to learn electricity, I suppose she must put up with him. He is no worse, after all, than the rest of the people one has to learn things from. ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... which made a revolution second only to that made by the bow and for which even men of thought have not accounted as they should have done, with the illustration before them in our own times of what has followed so swiftly the use of steam and, later, of electricity. Men write of and wonder at the strange gap between what are called the Paleolithic and the Neolithic ages, that is, between the ages when the spearheads and ax and arrowheads were of stone chipped roughly ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Administration building till it seemed almost to pierce the clouds. They were looking upon a scene never before excelled in grandeur by the art of man. The basin was filled with gondolas gracefully plied by Venetians, launches moving both by steam and by electricity and gay sailboats of every description. In the far end of the basin was to be seen the Statue of the Republic sixty-five feet tall and standing forty feet above the water on its great stone foundation. The MacMonnies fountain ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... so doing avail ourselves of the laws of Nature to produce remoter effects. But, except by originating motion, we cannot act at all. And, accordingly, throughout all science the attempt is made to reduce all phenomena to motions. Sounds, colours, heat, chemical action, electricity, we are perpetually endeavouring to reduce to vibrations or undulations, that is, to motion of some sort or other. The mind seems to find a satisfaction when a change of whatever kind is shown to be, or possibly to be, the result of movement. And so too all laws of Nature are then felt ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... develop additional faculties. We return to the same material world but we find it with a higher form of civilization than when we were here before. Never before have we who are now here seen a civilization like this, with its age of iron and steam and electricity, with its marvelous opportunities for developing the mechanical faculty in human nature. And that is another bit of evidence of the beauty and utility of the evolutionary scheme. We come back always to greater opportunities than ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... flying-machine. In the midst of a frame of light wood sits the operator, steadying himself with one hand, and with the other fuming a cremaillere, which appears to give a very quick rotatory movement to two glass globes revolving upon a vertical axis. The friction of the globes is supposed to develop electricity to which his power ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... much more than in the new-born contrivances which were preparing to revolutionize travel. But the wand of the enchanter had been waved; steam had come, and with it the new era of progress had dawned. And another great agent in the development of civilization was about to come. Electricity, which during all previous time had laughed at bonds, was soon to become man's slave, and to be made his purveyor of news. It is the story of this chaining of the lightning, and forcing it to become the swift conveyer of man's sayings and doings, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... ELECTRICITY, n. The power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else. It is the same thing as lightning, and its famous attempt to strike Dr. Franklin is one of the most picturesque incidents in that great and good man's career. The memory of ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... piled-up round the brig and set on fire, and as the flames flashed in his eyes he started up in bed to see that the cabin was vividly illuminated, but only for a moment or two at a time, and he knew that it was from the electricity which played ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... electricity,—the demon, the angel, the mighty physical power, the all-pervading intelligence!" exclaimed Clifford. "Is that a humbug, too? Is it a fact—or have I dreamt it—that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the above remedies generally fail of success, I think frequent, almost hourly, shocks of electricity from very small charges might be passed through the head in all directions with probability of good event. And the use of the trephine, where the affected side can be distinguished. See Strabismus, Class I. 2. 5. 4. When one eye is affected, does the disease exist ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... a great mistake on the subject of saying, or acting, farewell. The word or deed should partake of the suddenness of electricity; but we all drawl through it at a snail's pace. We are supposed to tear ourselves from our friends; but tearing is a process which should be done quickly. What is so wretched as lingering over a last kiss, giving the hand for the third time, saying over and over again, 'Good-bye, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... luminous appearance of the sea which has been so often mentioned by navigators, and of which such various causes have been assigned; some supposing it to be occasioned by fish, which agitated the water by darting at their prey, some by the putrefaction of fish and other marine animals, some by electricity, and others referring it to a great variety of different causes. It appeared to emit flashes of light exactly resembling those of lightning, only not so considerable, but they were so frequent that sometimes eight or ten were visible almost at the same moment. We were of opinion that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... hidden forces in our nature and in life about us of which we little dream. The marvelous forces of electricity are being applied to all human activities, and are unfolding to us new life and new possibilities. We are told that there are mightier currents in the atmosphere above us than those in the Mississippi or the Amazon. Likewise, the science of education ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... of those fruitful years of research did not tell half the story of the wonderful things that were to be; the uses of electricity which are within easy reach for the most homely and practical purposes are as mysterious and magical as the dreams of the magicians. We are served by invisible ministers who are more powerful than the genii and more nimble than ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... heavy silk robe he wore there had been painted the grinning skeleton. It was painted with a secret chemical paint, and when subjected to a flow of electricity the bones and skull showed outlined in fire. The professor, keeping well back toward the rear ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... cabinet-making, calcimining, carpentry, chalk-engraving, cementing, chair-making, china-painting, construction work, cooking, clay-modeling, coopery, dairying, domestic science, drawing, dress-making, electricity, embroidery, engineering, fancy work, farming, floriculture, gardening, glazing, harness-making, house decoration, half-tone engraving, housework, horticulture, ironing, knife work, knitting, lace-making, laundering, leather work, ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... "Matter penetrates it, electricity, all ordinary forces. But this field won't. It's ... well, whatever Craven has is similarly dissimilar. The same thing of opposite nature. It repels our field, but doesn't affect anything else. That ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... and there is light. Never sorcery more fantastic was imagined, yet for him this sorcery is a simple and natural thing. He would be greatly surprised if one were to come and tell him that a certain god might, if he chose, stop the machines and extinguish the lights when the electricity had been turned on; he would reply that this anarchistic god would be simply a misplaced gearing or a broken wire, and that it would be easy for him to seek and find this disturbing god. The practice of the modern factory teaches scientific determinism to the wage-worker, without ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... nothing save electricity is talked about in scientific circles. During the meeting of the British Association the greatest possible prominence was given to electrical questions and propositions The success of the electric light, the introduction of the Faure battery ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... the minerals into food for animals, so each man converts some raw material in nature to human use. The inventors of fire, electricity, magnetism, iron; lead, glass, linen, silk, cotton; the makers of tools; the inventor of decimal notation; the geometer; the engineer; musician,—severally make an easy way for all, through unknown and impossible confusions. Each man is, by secret liking, connected with some district of ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... explains the phenomena, it has still met with great opposition. The motions which Lieut. Maury supposes can hardly be accounted for without resorting, as is usual in such cases, to electricity or magnetism,—to some occult cause, or some occult operation of a known cause. Moreover, it has been difficult for the mechanical philosopher to understand how the winds manage to cross each other, as Lieut. Maury supposes them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... polishing the furniture. Open the windows top and bottom, dust and brush them inside and out; use a soft brush or a dust mop to take the dust from the floor. Use a carpet sweeper for the rugs unless you have electricity and can use a vacuum cleaner; collect the ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... bosom. In this case the gods are the personifications of the forces of Nature. But the initiated Adepts of India understand very clearly that the god Indra, for instance, is nothing more than a mere sound, born of the shock of electrical forces, or simply electricity itself. Surya is not the god of the sun, but simply the centre of fire in our system, the essence whence come fire, warmth, light, and so on; the very thing, namely, which no European scientist, steering an even course between Tyndall and Schropfer, has, as yet, defined. ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... are but agencies conveyed, as if by electric wires, to my own brain from the brain of another. In some constitutions there is a natural chemistry, and these constitutions may produce chemic wonders—in others a natural fluid, call it electricity, and ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... my land and therefore no longer my guest," he said, and the snap in his voice was like the crackling of electricity. "Don't let me ever see you here again. You are keen and intelligent. You spoke the truth a short time since. You were right. I tolerate nothing in my place that is not my own—no man, no animal, no bird, no insect nor reptile even—that ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... upon which such provision proceeds is that accidental injuries to workmen in modern industry, with its vast complexity and inherent dangers arising from complicated machinery and the use of the great forces of steam and electricity, should be regarded as risks of the industry and the loss borne in some equitable proportion by those who for their own profit engage therein. In recognition of this the last Congress authorized the appointment ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... earth altogether, and was gliding upwards through starland without effort or conscious movement of any sort, simply as though lifted by the hands that held her own. Their vitality thrilled through her like a strong current of electricity. She felt that whichever way they turned, wherever they led her, she must be safe. And there was a quivering ecstasy in that dazzling, rapid rush that filled her veins like ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... gas has been given as a plaything. Considering this power which men of our time possess, and the way they use it, one feels that considering the degree of their moral development men have no right, not only to the use of railways, steam, electricity, telephones, photography, wireless telegraphs, but even to the simple art of manufacturing iron and steel, as all these improvements and arts they use only for the satisfaction of their lusts, for amusement, dissipation, and the ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy
... lore. With these assets he paused at Oxford that he might skim through the classics. He had been told this was where all the going-to-be-great men stopped to acquire just the proper tone of superiority so necessary in ruling a country. Of course he picked up a bit on electricity, mechanics, etc. This accomplished to his satisfaction he ran over to America to view the barbarians' god of money and take a glance at their houses which touched the sky. But his whole purpose in living, he told me, was to yield himself to certain meditations, so that in his final reincarnation, ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... or one meter to every 4.5 persons. A gas stove is in practically every wage-earner's home. The present price of gas is $1.05 net per thousand cubic feet. The average monthly gas bill for wage-earners is said by the company to be about $1.90 net. Electricity is burned for lighting purposes in many of the newer tenements even when the rent is low, and the average bill for wage-earners for electricity is about $1 per month. In recognition of the fact that some families burn gas for cooking only and have an additional expenditure for electric light, ...
— The Cost of Living Among Wage-Earners - Fall River, Massachusetts, October, 1919, Research Report - Number 22, November, 1919 • National Industrial Conference Board
... grew fewer, coming at longer intervals, and the fact that when the windows did come they seemed shadowed and let in less light, showed that they were winding into the core or belly of some enormous building. After a little time the glazed corridors began to be lit by electricity. ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... bountiful wisdom, has compensated me for a singular absence of beauty by endowing me with great strength, and with one of those exceptional constitutions which seem constantly charged with electricity. Without being what is called a mesmerist, I am possessed of considerable magnetic power, which I have endeavoured to develop as far as possible. In many a long conversation with old Manu Lal, my Brahmin instructor in languages and philosophy while in the plains, we had discussed ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... detest the man, but somehow couldn't. To hate him would be hating an overpowering force, like heat, or electricity. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... that mysterious ether? It can neither be seen, heard, felt, handled, smelt, nor tasted. Nevertheless, man has learned so much about its "how" that he is turning it into as menial a servant, obedient to his wishes, as he has made of electricity, the cause of sublime thunder; for man bids the ether carry his stock quotations or any other message of his to the ends ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... career with Richardson and Fielding.[7] Inventive genius achieved the first great triumph of modern mechanicism in Watt's steam-engine.[8] Even across the ocean spread the intellectual impulse, and the New World had its Franklin to astonish and delight the old with his experiments in electricity—childish experiments at first, as man reached out slowly, shudderingly, toward control of this last and most marvellous ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... his hands with glee. After allowing him to enjoy the novelty for some time, the Fairy said to him, "To-morrow I will show you another kite, more wonderful than these. I will make it so, that it will draw down the electricity from the sky. Have you ever rubbed a cat's fur the wrong way, in the dark?" "Oh, that I have! it's great fun. There's our black cat, at home, I have often done it to her, and I can see the sparks in cold ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... curly smile, seemed trying to compromise this proposition, which appeared to have relation to the middle classes; and though agreeing with the Irishman, Shelton felt nervous over his discharge of electricity. Next to them two American ladies, assembled under the tent of hair belonging to a writer of songs, were discussing the emotions aroused ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... gone; all men were equal before the law; taxation had been equalized. The telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the typewriter, the sewing-machine, and all the thousand willing and handy servants of steam and electricity were working their way into favor. We had a steamboat or two on the Thames, we had steam warships, and the beginnings of a steam commercial marine; I was getting ready to send out ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... already dead. Then you admired me. Then I was the man—not that kind of athlete you had just left, but the man of will-power, the mesmerist who instilled new nervous energy into your flabby muscles and charged your empty brain with a new store of electricity. And then I gave you back your reputation. I brought you new friends, furnished you with a little court of people who, for the sake of friendship to me, let themselves be lured into admiring you. I set you to rule me and my house. Then I painted my best pictures, glimmering with ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... hidden forces of nature control man yet bend to his bidding—electricity, air, steam, etc.—so do the open and obvious ones which the painter deals with. They dictate all the conditions and yet somehow—he governs. The different ways in which he does this gives to art its variety and enables us to form a ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... to study and work with Gluck. It is the opportunity of a lifetime. Gluck is to the world of medicine what Edison is to the world of electricity. He is a wizard, a man inspired. You should see him—a little, bent, grizzled, shabby old man who looks at you, and sees you not. It is a ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... the inmates. Their fittings for housekeeping are of all degrees of perfection, and, except for the want of light and air, life in them has a high degree of gross luxury. They are heated throughout with pipes of steam or hot water, and they are sometimes lighted with both gas and electricity, which the inmate uses at will, though of course at his own cost. Outside, they are the despair of architecture, for no style has yet been invented which enables the artist to characterize them with beauty, and ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... est.); commodities—asphalt, bitumen, petroleum products, metals and metallic ores, electricity, oil, vegetables, fruits, tobacco; partners—Italy, Yugoslavia, FRG, Greece, ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... 'I'll arrange for a good report of the meeting to appear in the Weekly Ananias. I'll instruct the Editor to write it himself, and I'll tell him just what to say. I'll also get him to write a leading article about it, saying that electricity is sure to supersede gas for lighting purposes in the very near future. Then the article will go on to refer to the huge profits made by the Gas Coy and to say how much better it would have been if the town had bought the gasworks years ago, so that those profits might have ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... hazy sunlight as in dark. The tremendous change of resistance involved in the expression "337.5 times" may perhaps be more fully realized by saying that 99.704 per cent. of the resistance had disappeared temporarily, under the joint action of light and electricity, so that there remained less than 3/10 of 1 per cent. of the original resistance of the selenium ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... came another to which the captain especially directed my attention as being what Sam. Petalengro calls 'The girl in the red chemise'—as well as I can recall his words. A very sweet song, with a simple but spirited chorus, and as the sympathetic electricity of excitement seized the performers we were all in a minute going down the rapids in a spring freshet. 'Sing, sir, sing!' cried my handsome neighbour, with her black ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Senator. "Mr. Bebbini says there's a law against them nowadays. Now that you mention it, I'm disappointed there too. Municipal progress in Italy is something you've not prepared for somehow. I daresay if we only knew it, they're thinking of lighting this town with electricity, and the Board of Aldermen are considering ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... secure good soil, plenty of water, and fine scenery for a settlement. Next came the Hispano-American era of adobe, stage-coaches, and mule teams, now replaced by the purely American possessions, with brick, stone, vestibule trains, and all the wonders of electricity. It is now a commercial centre, a railroad terminal, with one hundred miles of street-car track within the city limits, carrying twelve million passengers yearly. It has outgrown the original grant of six miles square, ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... nineteen miles. The light is worked by vaporised oil. The compressed air drives the oil to the lantern, up through that burner in a hole hardly big enough to take a pin point. It is nearly half a million candle-power. This type of light is considered even better than electricity. In the old-style oil-lights they burned five quarts in the same time that this one consumes a pint with ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... whiskey, wrapped up in shoddy clothes and paper shoes, having their pockets picked by weighing frauds at the mines, and their bodies mashed in speed-up devices in the mills; stabled in filthy shacks without water or sewers or electricity which we uptown people demand and get for the same money that they pay for these hog-pens—why, hell's afire and the cows are out—Laura! by Godfrey's diamonds, if I lived down here I'd get me some frisky dynamite and blow the whole place into kindling." He sat blinking his indignation; then began ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... handsomely decorated, and lighted by electricity, for the occasion. Potted flowers, palms, and ferns were artistically grouped in the corners, and handsome draperies were hung here and there to simulate windows and doors, and to conceal whatever might otherwise ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... went alone, in the afternoon, and didn't go out for dinner—found some sherry and tins of biscuit in the sideboard. He shot himself sometime that night. There were pistols in his smoking-room. They found burnt out candles beside him in the morning. The gas and electricity were shut off. I suppose there, in his own house, among his own things, it was too much for him. He left ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... we now call inferior races and nations. We have carried many of these to their highest point of perfection, but the foundation was laid by others. Do you know the only original contribution to civilization we can claim is what we have done in steam and electricity and in making implements of war more deadly? And there we worked largely on principles which we did not discover. Why, we didn't even originate the religion we use. We are a great race, the greatest in the world today, but ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... other quarters. Faraday has been diligently pursuing his investigations into the phenomena of electricity and magnetism through greater part of the dead season, and will be prepared erelong to make the results public. And Professor Stokes's researches and experiments on light, which have been laid before the British Association and the Royal Society, are regarded by competent judges ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... the identical steel needle which formed the indicator in the office of the first Atlantic cable, that three-thousand-mile-long wire, covered with gutta percha to keep out the salt water, which was laid from England to America under the ocean. You know that we telegraph by electricity, which is lightning in harness. But you may not know that this first deep-sea wire sent messages which were read by the way in which a flash of light was reflected in a mirror, wavering to and fro; and that the very first message was a greeting of peace and goodwill from Queen ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... dark Baal with carven lips and blank eye-balls, and breast like the stone face of a tomb; and again, suddenly, at some turn, some sound, some long-trembling sob of the wind, at some rushing past of an unseen stream of electricity, the irrational demon would wake unsolicited, would stir strangely alive, would rush from its pedestal like a perturbed Dagon, calling to its votary for a sacrifice, whatever the hour—to its victim for some blood, or some breath, whatever the circumstance or scene—rousing its priest, treacherously ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Mr. Bobbsey's office, the trolley car got off the track, on account of so much snow on the rails, and the children spent some time watching the men get it back, the electricity from the wire and rails making ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... armor, make two cubic feet of Bilin polishing slate in four days. By straining sea-water, a web of greenish cloth of gold, illuminated by their play of self-generated electric light, has been collected. Humboldt and Ehrenberg speak of their voracity, their power of discharging electricity at will, and their sporting about, exhibiting an intelligent enjoyment of the life God has given to them. Man and his works perish, but the monuments of the infusoriae are the flinty ribs of the sea, the giant bones of huge continents, heaped into mountain-ranges over which the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various |
