"Projectile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trivial, now gigantic—always awesome in the power and volition it revealed. One passed from the sight of a brown puddle, scooped in the surface of the street by an exploding shell, to a view of a magnificent ash tree splintered by some projectile. It is a very rare thing to see a sinister landscape, but this whole road was sinister. I used to discuss this sinister quality with a distinguished French artist who as a poilu was the infirmier, or medical service man, attached to a squad of engineers working ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... knows exactly when or Why he came to call it tenor, But the fact remains he sang With a subtle nasal twang Just because he liked to do so (He was Carr, but not CARUSO), And with such a force of lung That, whatever tune he sung, It was like a projectile With a range of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... May's cell would not have terrified the governor as much as did this inoffensive projectile. He stood in silent dismay; his mouth wide open, his eyes starting from their sockets, as if he distrusted the evidence of his own senses. What a disgrace! An instant before he would have staked his life upon the inviolability of the secret cells; ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... he was passing the bandstand the educated mule, with Teddy Tucker on its back, bolted through the curtains like a projectile. The mule nearly ran over Phil, then brought up suddenly to launch both heels at him. But the Circus Boy had seen this same mule in action before, and this time Phil had discreetly ducked under ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... through the room like a projectile from a coast-defense gun. Serina listened with bated breath as Horace read the confirmation. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... more passed, when puff came a little cloud of smoke. We held our breaths. It gives a fellow a queer sensation to know that a deadly projectile is coming for him. It might have been four seconds, though it seemed longer, when we saw the ice fly up rapidly in three or four places half a mile from the schooner as the ball came skipping along, and, bounding off the edge of the ice-field, ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... got up and kicked Manuel in the shins; the poor boy saw stars. He gave a cry of pain and then, furious, seized a plate and sent it flying at the agent's head; the latter ducked and the projectile crossed the dining-room, crashed through a window pane and fell into the courtyard, where it smashed with a racket. The salesman grabbed one of the coffee-pots that was filled with coffee and milk and hurled it at Manuel ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... same instant two gray shadows evolved themselves out of the very ground, and slid away, swift as scudding clouds, up the slope; and a third gray form, also apparently sprung from nowhere, rose from before them, and dropped like a spent projectile into the low-lands. They were two mountain hares and an old sinner of a gray crow; but the thing that caught the Chieftain's stabbing eye most was none ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... Mr. Santell Roumann. "If and Professor Henderson can build the proper projectile, we ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... war horse in the Bible, the veteran traveller shouted "Aha!" and he shot across the Mediterranean like a projectile from a cannon. But he had no sooner reached Suez than he heard—his usual luck—that Sir Charles Warren, with 200 picked men, was scouring the peninsula, and that consequently his own services would not be required. In six weeks he was back ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... characteristics of the newcomers, prescribed and administered an exemplary dose of frightfulness. He began by tickling up the Stickybacks with an unpleasant engine called the Minenwerfer, which despatches a large sausage-shaped projectile in a series of ridiculous somersaults, high over No Man's Land into the enemy's front-line trench, where it explodes and annihilates everything in that particular bay. Upon these occasions one's only chance of salvation is to ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... erected and still more hastily designed building in a dirty, paper-littered back street of old London, and a number of shabbily dressed men coming and going in this with projectile swiftness, and within this factory companies of printers, tensely active with nimble fingers—they were always speeding up the printers—ply their type-setting machines, and cast and arrange masses of metal in a sort of kitchen inferno, above which, in a beehive of ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... decision gave great offence to the particularists and called general attention to this silent Union-making factor. Various Southern writers took up pens against this new menace to individual rights. Some State Legislatures adopted protests. Madison alluded sarcastically to the "projectile capacity" of the court, whereby it extended the power of Congress from the exclusive jurisdiction reserve of ten miles square constituting the District, even to the uttermost parts of the country. The "twistifications" of Marshall, said Jefferson, showed ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... tempest was heard advancing. The mass went muttering directly between the masts of the Swash. It had scarcely seemed to go by when the fierce flash of fire and the sharp explosion followed. Happily for those in the brig, the projectile force given by the gun carried the fragments from them, as in the other instance it had brought them forward; else would few have escaped mutilation, or death, among ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... shots should fail to satisfy one of the two gentlemen, a second should take place. Valentin's first bullet had done exactly what Newman's companion was convinced he had intended it to do; it had grazed the arm of M. Stanislas Kapp, just scratching the flesh. M. Kapp's own projectile, meanwhile, had passed at ten good inches from the person of Valentin. The representatives of M. Stanislas had demanded another shot, which was granted. Valentin had then fired aside and the young Alsatian had done effective execution. "I saw, when we met ...
— The American • Henry James
... frigates and sloops were composed chiefly of nine-inch guns, with one or more pivots of ten- or eleven-inch bore. The shell-shot, whose destructive effects had excited Farragut's comments in 1838, were now the recognized type of projectile; and the new guns were spoken of distinctively as shell-guns, because not expected to use solid shot under ordinary circumstances. The Brooklyn and her fellows, among which was Farragut's future flag-ship, the Hartford, although screw steamers, had also ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... bring him she always told herself, and usually after two or three empty Sundays there would come a happy one, with the new car which was built like a projectile, purring in the road, George and Alice shouting greetings as they came in the gate, Louise excitedly attempting to outdo herself on the dinner, and the sunburned noisy babies shrieking themselves hoarse as they romped with ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... had pitched into space, with equal suddenness did I emerge from the fog, out of which I shot like a projectile from a cannon into clear daylight. My speed was so great that I could see nothing about me but a blurred and indistinct sheet of smooth and frozen snow, that rushed ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... full month nothing could be done to the cannon, since it would take quite that time for the metal to cool. Everything else had been done or made ready. The huge projectile which was to wing its way into Space to do battle for the life of humanity was completed. The boring and rifling tools were finished, and all the materials for the driving and the bursting charges were ready at hand for putting into their final form when the work of loading up began. ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... weapon the thing had drawn and examined it carefully. The mechanism was unfamiliar, but a glance at the muzzle told him that it was a projectile weapon of some sort. The twisted grooves in the barrel were obviously designed to impart a spin to the projectile, to give it ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... against the sunbright distance, and simultaneously with the crack of the discharge, sounding as though all the pent-up forces of Hell had burst the brazen gates of Terror, and rushed forth to annihilate and destroy, the ninety-four pound projectile passed overhead, sweeping half the corrugated-iron roof from the railway-official's late dwelling with a fiendish clatter and din, as it passed harmlessly over the Women's Laager, and, wrecking a sentry's ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... mysterious signals and apparitions, I was startled by a sudden flash and the thunder of a heavy gun from the darkness ahead; and away out at sea, in the strip of green water illuminated by the search-lights, a heavy projectile plunged into the ocean, near the sail of the Flying Dutchman, and sent a column of white spray thirty feet into the air. Then I understood what it all meant. The Wilmington, was engaged in night gun practice. For half an hour or more ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... in any sensible, possible, likely way, but not on such a supposition. It would be like shooting at the moon: if a high-powered gun could get its projectile beyond our attraction of gravitation and if it were aimed right, why, then the shot might hit the mark. Too blamed many 'ifs.' And some of the greatest astronomers say Mars ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... instance of religious respect had its due weight with the pious islanders, by whom it was taken up, and for a long time preserved among the sacred curiosities of the town. A natural cause was, however, soon discovered for the harmlessness of the projectile. Napoleon continued his firing; but finding that the shells took no effect, though they fell on the very spot he intended, he examined some of them, and found that they were filled with sand. ‘Amici,’ he exclaimed, burning with indignation; ‘eccole il tradimento;’ ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... guardian spirits were in a position to explain, but they kept discreetly silent. The men in Durand's room could truthfully declare that they had not had a thing to do with the launching of that extraordinary projectile and also that Durand was not in his room. It was not necessary to be too explicit, they felt, and twenty minutes later all were over at Middie's Haven, Guy Bennett and Richard Allyn, to Juno's secret disgust, having shifted into civilian clothes as ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... of the hippopotamus, I found that the shell had struck exactly beneath the eye, where the bone plate is thin. It had traversed the skull, and had apparently exploded in the brain, as it had entirely carried away the massive bone that formed the back of the skull. The velocity of the projectile had carried the fragments of the shell onwards after the explosion, and had formed a sort of tunnel which was blackened with burnt powder for a considerable distance along the flesh of the neck. I was quite satisfied with my ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... footing on the parapet, and were able to hold the same for the space of two minutes. Both sides were to abstain from putting pebbles into their snowballs, nor was it permissible to use frozen ammunition. A snowball soaked in water and left out to cool was a projectile which in previous years had been resorted ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... the inventor of the Cope gun. He's a wonder. He was out here in the employ of the Porsslanese Government. Most of their artillery was designed by him. What a useful man he has been to his country! First he invented a projectile that could go through any steel plate then known, and all the navies had to build new steel-clad ships on a new principle that he had invented to prevent his projectiles from piercing them. Then what does he do, but invent a new projectile that could go ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... shot was not answered: the officer in command at that exposed part of the line had evidently no desire to provoke a cannonade. For the forbearance Captain Graffenreid was conscious of a sense of gratitude. He had not known that the flight of a projectile was a phenomenon of so appalling character. His conception of war had already undergone a profound change, and he was conscious that his new feeling was manifesting itself in visible perturbation. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... was excruciating—but it did not break that lock-hold on the outlaw's hand and gun. Shooting from his knees like a projectile, Merryfield flung his whole weight at the door. Big as Drake was, he could not hold it. It gave, and once more the two men hung at grips, this time within ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... an enormous projectile, the peculiarity of which was that its motive power was contained within itself, very much as a rocket contains the explosives which send it upward. It differed, however, from the rocket or any other similar projectile, and many of its features were ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... in a group. They can maim or kill a man, but their range is short and penetrative power small. A bulwarked vessel was, so to say, armored against canister; for it makes no difference whether the protection is six inches of wood or ten of iron, provided it keeps out the projectile. The American schooners were in ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... in the first, the third pushed in the second; the horses reared, threw themselves over, fell upon their backs, and struggled with their feet in the air, piling up and overturning their riders; no power to retreat; the whole column was nothing but a projectile. The force acquired to crush the English crusht the French. The inexorable ravine could not yield until it was filled; riders and horses rolled in together pell-mell, grinding each other, making common flesh in this dreadful gulf, and when this grave was full ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... and Tommy prepared his message-carrying projectile. He found snapshots and included them. He tore out a photograph of Evelyn and her father, which had been framed above a work bench in the laboratory. He labored, racking his brain for a means of conveying the information that the globe was of any other world.... And suddenly he had ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... towards a horizontal surface—say from air on to glass or water—the velocity of the light-particles, when they came close to the surface, is, according to Newton, also accelerated. Approaching such a surface obliquely, he supposed the particles, when close to it, to be drawn down upon it, as a projectile is deflected by gravity to the surface of the earth. This deflection was, according to Newton, the refraction seen in our last lecture (fig. 4). Finally, it was supposed that differences of colour might be due to differences in the 'bigness' of the particles. ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... Formerly these disputes were settled by physical contact of the disputants, with such simple arguments as the rudimentary logic of the times could supply—the sword, the spear, and so forth. With the growth of prudence in military affairs the projectile came more and more into favor, and is now held in high esteem by the most courageous. Its capital defect is that it requires personal attendance ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... so placed and labelled that the required charge, whether reduced or full, can be immediately selected. In the shell store also for the same reason the common shell are separated from the armour-piercing or shrapnel. Each nature of projectile is painted in a distinctive manner to render identification easy. The fuzes, tubes, &c., are placed in the general store with the tools and accessories belonging to the guns. The gun group is distinguished by some letter ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... keel, making the landing a vertical one. Ferragut shot out like a projectile, falling in the foaming whirlpools and having the impression, as he sank, that men and casks together were rolling ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the wood interior, or by vast gradations toward it. The muzzle of the cannon is the only place where the fire and smoke are seen, but how much weight is necessitated back of this for the recoil, and how much space must be reckoned on for the projectile of the gun. A terrific explosion takes place; but we do not realize its power until it is noted that sound reverberated and the earth trembled for miles around. For its full realization the report of the quiet miles is important. The lack of this support ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... crane was slowly swinging the first projectile into place over the muzzle of that colossal gun. Mona eyed ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... nearly all perished, not through our puny efforts, but in consequence of disease, and the few survivors fled in one of their projectile cars, inflicting their crudest blow in the act ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... fire at 500 to 700 yards, which means that at this range the track or "wake" of a projectile would be discernible for, say, twenty-five to thirty seconds—not much time, indeed, for any ship to get out of the way. At 100 yards' range or less they do not care to fire unless compelled to, as the torpedo is nearly always discharged when the submarine is lying ahead of the object, ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... the noise going on seemed to indicate that some fierce fighting must be in progress. The dull but powerful thud of exploding hand bombs, the sharper crashing explosion of shell, the report of a discharging gun and the roar of its projectile, echoed and re-echoed, in its flight along one of the numerous ravines, induced belief that very little time must elapse before the 28th would be "in it." It turned out otherwise, however, and subsequent experience showed ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... was not more successful than that of Tudor Brown—for it fell short two or three hundred yards. But the combat was now begun, and the firing became regular. An American projectile cut the large sail yards of the "Alaska," and it fell upon the deck killing two men. A small bomb from the Swedish vessel fell upon the bridge of the "Albatross," and must have made great havoc. Then other projectiles skillfully thrown lodged in ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... was on my right, with a double-barrelled express rifle that carried a No. 70 bullet. This minute projectile was of little use against the charge ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... him, however, within the minute. One of his cylinders was missing. His trained ear caught at the change of the "tune," and he felt his speed decreasing. He glanced back briefly, where the dusty lump of steel, like a red-hot projectile, thundered ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... phenomenon due to the war, begotten by the war; for Lady Queenie had said that if she was to do war-work without disaster to her sanity she must have the right environment. Thus the putting together of Lady Queenie's nest had proceeded concurrently with the building of national projectile factories and of square miles of offices for the girl clerks of ministries and departments ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... a bullet would have a hoarse sound—that meant that it had ricochetted. At intervals of three or four minutes a huge, old-fashioned projectile would labour through the air, visible all the time, and crash harmlessly into the woods. The Americans called it the "long yellow feller," and sometimes a negro trooper would turn and with a yell shoot at it as it passed over. A little way off, a squad of the ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... in a short walk to the market or the post-office, or to do a little shopping, wonder how it is that their pedestrian friends can compass so many weary miles and not fall down from sheer exhaustion; ignorant of the fact that the walker is a kind of projectile that drops far or near according to the expansive force of the motive that set it in motion, and that it is easy enough to regulate the charge according to the distance to be traversed. If I am loaded to carry only one mile and am compelled to walk ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... the other; while the long swing to the right invariably means the long swing to the left. An object hurled upward to a certain height has an equal distance to traverse on its return. The force with which a projectile is sent upward a mile is reproduced when the projectile returns to the earth on its return journey. This Law is constant on the Physical Plane, as reference to the standard ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... situated a short distance back from the crest of the ridge with a background little different in color from that of the battery, we found it difficult to locate them at times. Our elevation had to be perfect, as with an inch or two below or above, the projectile would either vanish in the distance or take effect on the cliffs below ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... annular tubes meets this part of the difficulty; for, if the inner tube is excessively heated, it can elongate and slip a little within those surrounding it, without disturbing them. In fact, the inner tube of the Armstrong gun is sometimes turned within the others by the inertia of the rifled projectile. On the whole, then, hooping an inner steel tube with successively tighter steel rings, or, what is better, tubes, is the probable direction of improvement in heavy ordnance. An inner tube of iron, cast hollow on Rodman's plan, so as to avoid an inherent rupturing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the report of a gun sounded from the top, and a projectile fell into the western enclosures of the town. Others, better aimed, followed in quick succession; the camp came under a rapid bombardment, accurate but harmless, for the small common shell from the enemy's field-pieces failed to explode on impact with the sodden ground. The cavalry ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... approach within artillery range. A small body of horse and camel men made a sort of haphazard reconnaissance, and, being seen from the outpost line, were fired on at a great distance by a field-gun. They fell back immediately, but it was believed that the range was too great for the projectile to have harmed them; and it was not until two days later that the discovery on the spot of a swollen, blistering corpse, clad in bright jibba, apprised the delighted gunners of the effect of their fire. Warned by this lucky shot the Dervishes came ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... clairvoyance of the mesmerists, or the dream of our ordinary sleep, which last has been called a proof of soul, though any man who has kept a dog must have observed that dogs dream as vividly as we do. But in this trance there is an extraordinary cerebral activity, a projectile force given to the mind, distinct from the soul, by which it sends forth its own emanations to a distance in spite of material obstacles, just as a flower, in an altered condition of atmosphere, sends forth the particles of its aroma. This should not surprise you. Your ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... afraid of ghosts. The tract shops exhibited in their windows bullet-dinted testaments, mothers' gifts to their soldier sons whose lives had been saved by it; for the muzzle-loaders of those days could not drive a projectile through ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... hole of a fallen tree, shooting down the channel with the force and velocity of a great projectile, struck the tottering supports of the crazy, ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... dabblers" of the Liber Studiorum; the boys scrambling after their kites in the woods of the Greta and Buckfastleigh; and the notable and most pathetic drawing of the Kirkby Lonsdale churchyard, with the schoolboys making a fortress of their larger books on the tombstone, to bombard with the more projectile volumes; and passing from these to the intense horror and pathos of the Rizpah, consider for yourself whether there was ever any other painter who could strike such an octave. Whether there has been or not, in other walks of art, this power of sympathy is ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... arrangement the resistance to the conduction of the electricity was diminished and a greater quantity made to circulate around the iron from the same battery. The second method of producing a similar result consisted in increasing the number of elements of the battery, or, in other words, the projectile force of the electricity, which enabled it to pass through an increased number of turns of wire, and thus, by increasing the length of the wire, to develop the maximum power ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... patches of bright verdure. As we glide along among the islands which line the shore, we are pretty sure to fall in with one of the little propellers, with a small swivel gun at the bow, in search of whales. The projectile which is used consists of a barbed harpoon, to which a short chain is affixed, and to that a strong line. This harpoon has barbs which expand as soon as they enter the body of the animal and he pulls upon the line, stopping at a certain angle, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... meet any attack he might meditate, the irate fireman stooped and seized a big lump of coal. Ralph could hardly hope to dodge the missile, hemmed in as he was. It was poised for a vicious fling. Just as Fogg's hand went backwards to aim the projectile, it was seized, the missile was wrested from his grasp, and a strange voice drawled ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... Through all his realms the kindling Ether runs, And the mass starts into a million suns; Earths round each sun with quick explosions burst, And second planets issue from the first; Bend, as they journey with projectile force, 110 In bright ellipses their reluctant course; Orbs wheel in orbs, round centres centres roll, And form, self-balanced, one revolving Whole. —Onward they move amid their bright abode, Space without bound, THE BOSOM OF ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... been repeated that Man is the only creature sufficiently intelligent to utilise as weapons exterior objects like a stone or a stick; in a much greater degree, therefore, it was said, was he the only creature capable of striking from afar with a projectile. Nevertheless creatures so inferior as fish exhibit extreme skill in the art of reaching their prey at a distance. Several act in this way. There is first the Toxotes jaculator, who lives in the rivers ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... put on their curious-appearing headgear, and were waiting for the men whom they knew would be following the cloud at a safe distance. As soon as the Germans were near enough the British turned loose everything that would hurl a projectile large or small. By the time the gas cloud had cleared, or, to be more accurate, passed on to the rear of the British line and spent itself, the only Germans to be seen were in the piles of dead and wounded in front of the British most advanced trenches. The first time this occurred did not ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... can come after?—it's so good in itself that what, upstairs, as we comparative vulgarians say, can be better? Hold to it, at any rate, that if a lady, in especial, scrambles out of a carriage, tumbles out of a cab, flops out of a tram-car, and hurtles, projectile-like, out of a "lightning-elevator," she alights from the Venetian conveyance as Cleopatra may have stepped from her barge. Upstairs—whatever may be yet in store for her—her entrance shall still advantageously enjoy ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... capable of blasting it. 'Twas a tiny grain at first, an insignificant ball rolling and increasing as it went. From one slope to the other of the theorems, it grew to a heavy mass; and the mass became a mighty projectile which, flung backwards and retracing its course, split the darkness and spread it into one vast sheet ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... destroyer launched a torpedo at the Sylph. By a quick and skillful maneuver, Lord Hastings avoided this projectile, and a broadside was poured ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... drive a car!" she snapped; and for further answer she threw the speed lever into the intermediate gear and released the clutch. Like a projectile hurled from a catapult, the swift little roadster shot away down the cottonwood avenue, and with a jerk of the lever into the "high" the second ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... grouped about the brass cannon and rapidly loaded the weapon. Then, instead of a cannon ball, they put in a long, solid piece of iron, shaped like the modern shell, with a pointed nose. To this projectile was attached a long, thin, but ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... order to the effect that slang must not be used in official correspondence. Now instead of reporting that a "dud Minnie" arrived over back of "mud lane," it is necessary to put, "I have the honor to report that a projectile from a German Minnenwerfer landed in rear of Trench F 26 and ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... velocity gun, with a flat projectory, like our 18-pounder, has two disadvantages in mountain warfare. When the gun is firing from behind a steep hill, the shell, on leaving the gun, is liable to strike the hill in front instead of clearing the crest. When the projectile reaches the distant ridge (behind which the enemy are presumably taking cover), the angle of descent is not sufficiently steep to cause damage. More satisfactory results were obtainable with howitzers, whose high angle fire could both clear the forward crests and search the reverse ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... rifle, which became my colossal companion for many years in wild sports with dangerous game. It will be observed that the powder charge was one-third the weight of the projectile, and not only a tremendous crushing power, but an extraordinary penetration was obtained, never equalled by any rifle that ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... as he sent ten pounds weight of Rennickite, as he had christened it, into the Martian air-ship. There was the roar of an explosion which shook the air for miles around. A blaze of greenish flame and a huge cloud of steamy smoke showed that the projectile had done its work, and, when the smoke drifted away, the spot on which the air-ship had lain was only a deep, red, jagged gash in the ground. There was not even a fragment of the ship ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... could be made by tying the stone to the end of the stick, and as murder developed into a fine art the stick was converted into the bow and this into the catapult and finally into the cannon, while the stone was developed into the high explosive projectile. The first music to soothe the savage breast was the soughing of the wind through the trees. Then strings were stretched across a crevice for the wind to play upon and there was the AEolian harp. The second stage was entered when Hermes strung the tortoise shell and plucked ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... somewhere speaks of his utterance as "prophetic screams." The prophetic element is rarely absent, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, only it is a more jocund and reassuring cry than we are used to in prophecy. The forthrightness of utterance, the projectile force of expression, the constant appeal to unseen laws and powers of the great prophetic ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... times, it might be done. If the force, the control of which was discovered too late to help us straighten the axis, could be applied on a sufficiently large scale; if apergy——" "I have it!" exclaimed Ayrault, jumping up. "Apergy will do it. We can build an airtight projectile, hermetically seal ourselves within, and charge it in such a way that it will be repelled by the magnetism of the earth, and it will be forced from it with equal or greater violence than that with which it is ordinarily attracted. I believe the earth has but the same relation to space ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... hedges, in which embrasures were cut. The enemy's force was, I believe, chiefly composed of cavalry and artillery. The latter was already firing at us when Jaureguiberry rode along our lines. A shell exploded near him, and some splinters of the projectile struck his horse in the neck, inflicting a ghastly, gaping wound. The poor beast, however, did not fall immediately, but galloped on frantically for more than a score of yards, then suddenly reared, and after doing so came down, all of a heap, upon the snow. However, the Admiral, ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... the scull of the prisoner, had he not stretched forth an arm, and caught the handle in one of its turns, with a readiness quite as remarkable as the skill with which the missile had been hurled. The projectile force was so great, notwithstanding, that when Deerslayer's arm was arrested, his hand was raised above and behind his own head, and in the very attitude necessary to return the attack. It is not certain whether the circumstance of finding himself unexpectedly in ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... guns, he jokes as well As any Judge upon the Bench; Between the crash of shell and shell His laughter rings along the trench; He seems immensely tickled by a Projectile which he calls ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... Life. A Night Adventure. "The Gods take care of Cato." The Triumphs of Neptune. The Marquisi's Foot. Beauties of Naples Bay. Natural History of the Lazaroni. The True Venus. Love and Devotion. The Mortality of Pompeii. Procession of the Host. The Ascent of Vesuvius. The Mountain Emetic. The Human Projectile. The City of the Soul. The Coup de Main. Night in the Coliseum! Catholicity Considered. Power Passing Away! Byron Among the Ruins. A Gossip with the Artists. Speaking Gems. "Weep for Adonis!" The Lady and the God. ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... sudden swoosh somewhere on his right. A projectile, Tom realized! Turning, his eyes widened in horror as he saw an ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... spacing about the rounded sides. No helicopters swung their blades above; there were only the bulge of a conning tower and the heavy inset glasses of the lookouts. Nor were there wings of any kind. It might have been a projectile for ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... square, [Greek: 'aneu psogou], of their battle, their keep, and their cloister. Soldiers before and after everything, they learned the lockings and bracings of their stones primarily in defence against the battering-ram and the projectile, and esteemed the pure circular arch for its distributed and equal strength more than for its beauty. "I believe again," says M. le Duc,[16] "that the feudal castle never arrived at its perfectness till after the Norman invasion, and that this race of the North was the first to apply ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... between these two death-dealing localities, by the hollowest, least shelterless way discoverable, we mean to penetrate: (Forward, my men, steady and swift, till we are through the shot-range, and find men to grapple with, instead of case-shot and projectile iron!' Marechal de Saxe owned afterwards, 'He should have put an additional redoubt in that place, but he did not think any Army would try such a thing' (cannon batteries playing on each hand at 400 yards distance);—nor has any ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... again the picture showing the working of the bomb-dropping device, and I would like to have the film stopped exactly at the moment that the projectile leaves the tube. I wish to examine ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... spoke, he indicated the wall opposite the window, which obviously could not have been struck by a projectile entering with such extreme obliquity; and I was about to point out this fact when I fortunately remembered the ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... [Greek: ballein], to throw), the science of throwing warlike missiles or projectiles. It is now divided into two parts:—Exterior Ballistics, in which the motion of the projectile is considered after it has received its initial impulse, when the projectile is moving freely under the influence of gravity and the resistance of the air, and it is required to determine the circumstances so as to hit a certain object, with a view to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... exploded in the very centre of the speaker's waistcoat, causing him to jump nearly out of his skin. Redbrook sprang to his feet in a towering rage, and as he did so another projectile burst on the open ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... the projectile shot out and, burying itself in the soft dirt of the hill, threw it up ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... to hold on and resist the grinding shock, but Roy did not fare so well. Like a projectile from a catapult the shock flung him far. He came grinding down into the sand on one shoulder, ploughing a little furrow. Then he lay very still, while Peggy wondered vaguely if she was ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... causes that determine his causality are of such a kind as to agree with a comparative notion of freedom. According to this, that is sometimes called a free effect, the determining physical cause of which lies within the acting thing itself, e.g., that which a projectile performs when it is in free motion, in which case we use the word freedom, because while it is in flight it is not urged by anything external; or as we call the motion of a clock a free motion, because it moves its hands itself, which therefore do not require to be pushed by external force; ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... this afternoon, I was walking across the Place de la Bourse to file a cable message to the New York Tribune. I heard a loud explosion, followed by clashing of broken glass. A projectile had fallen a hundred yards distant and hit the top of a house in the Rue de Hanovre. The pompiers were on the spot within three minutes, having been summoned by the fire-alarm box near the Bourse. No serious damage was done, but little lead pellets were ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... There are two kinds, both being designed to be attached to kite lines and drawn over the water by the power of the kite. The simpler variety is merely a long wooden tube about three inches in diameter and shaped very much like a gun projectile, with a cone of tin dragging behind to give steadiness. It is for use only when the wind is blowing in exactly the direction in which it is designed to send a message or carry a rope. It will be observed that, in a large ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... down to a thousand feet. It shot toward the fleet at a speed which was literally that of a projectile. It angled off to one side and back, and suddenly dropped again and plunged crazily through the maze of ships from one end to the other, no more than fifty feet above the water and with geysers of up-flung sea all about it from the ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... shells, with their exceedingly mournful and groaning sound, seemed to have a more terrifying effect than the swift Mauser bullet, which always rendered the same salutation, "Bi-Yi." The midern shrapnel shell is better known as the man-killing projectile, and may be regarded as the most dangerous of all projectiles designed for taking human life. It is a shell filled with 200 or 300 bullets, and having a bursting charge, which is ignited by a time fuse, only sufficient to break the base and release the bullets, which then move forward with ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... always to pass down through a mass of incumbent loam with land shells, or through fine sand with freshwater molluscs, before we get into the beds of gravel containing hatchets. Occasionally a weapon used as a projectile may have fallen into quiet water, or may have dropped from a canoe to the bottom of the river, or may have been floated by ice, as are some stones occasionally by the Thames in severe winters, and carried ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... first time I saw the ship; she was stern on and apparently painted with black and white stripes. As I examined her through glasses—she was distant about 3,000 yards—I saw a flash aboard her and a few seconds later a projectile moaned overhead and fell about 6,000 yards over. So she is armed, thought I, and she has actually opened ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... which, as you see, is constructed of eight plates of inch iron—on the side of the ports, nine—set on end so as to break joints, and firmly bolted together, making a hollow cylinder eight inches thick. It rests on a metal ring on a vertical shaft, which is revolved by power from the boilers. If a projectile struck the turret at an acute angle, it was expected to glance off without doing damage. But what would happen if it was fired in a straight line to the center of the turret, which in that case ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... comfortable clubhouse at one end of it and this primeval monument at the other. They did not actually use this archaic abyss as a bunker, because it was by tradition unfathomable, and even for practical purposes unfathomed. Any sporting projectile sent into it might be counted most literally as a lost ball. But they often sauntered round it in their interludes of talking and smoking cigarettes, and one of them had just come down from the clubhouse to find another gazing somewhat ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... picture there, printed indelibly in his mind—a picture of a monstrous craft, a liner of the air, that swung its glowing lights in a swift arc and, like a projectile from some huge gun, shot up and up and still up until it vanished in a jet-black sky. Its altitude when it passed from sight he could not even guess, but the sense of ever-increasing speed, of power that mocked at gravitation's puny force, had struck deep into his mind. And McGuire saw plainly ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... charm.' The torpedo vessel is the Nina, a very strong iron boat of three hundred and fifty tuns burden, capable of crossing the ocean, and having a speed of seventeen knots an hour. She is not impervious to heavy shot, but can be made so, and is capable of resisting any ordinary projectile that could be brought to bear on her from the decks of a ship of war. Her decks will be made torpedo and shot-proof, and several arrangements will be applied, now that it is known that the torpedo system ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... will ascend higher and higher, and each time it will take a longer period before it returns to the ground. The descent of the bullet is due to the attraction of the earth. Gravitation must necessarily act on the projectile throughout its career, and it gradually lessens the velocity, overcomes the upward motion, and brings the bullet back. It must be remembered that the efficiency of the attraction decreases when the height ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... gentlemen, that these very restrictions of his own law—so openly stated as restrictions by Mr. Ricardo—are brought forward by Mr. Malthus as so many objections of his own to upset that law. The logic, as usual, is worthy of notice; for it is as if, in a question about the force of any projectile, a man should urge the resistance of the air, not as a limitation of that force, but as a capital objection to it. What I here insist on, however, is its extreme disingenuousness. But this is a subject which it is unpleasant to pursue; ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... thought that it would not require much skill to hit, at short range, such a large object as an oil-tank capable of holding thirty-five thousand barrels; but since, in order to send the ball through the iron plates it was necessary to hit it full at the place aimed for, otherwise the projectile would glance off, it can be seen that Ralph was ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... of course. In that case, I set my flitter into a projectile trajectory like this, whose objective is the center of the vortex, there. See? Ten seconds or so away, at about this point, I take my instantaneous readings, solve the equations at that particular warped surface for some ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... brought the new projectile, Colton, as I had agreed," answered the German, coolly, "but your quaint watchman has thrown it away. As for the girl," he added, with a broad grin, "she has fooled me. She said she had brains, and I find she ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... as a projectile hurtled by underneath us. The pilot remembered the broken landing-wire and steered for home. After landing, we compared notes with others who had returned from the expedition. C., we learned, was down at last, after seventeen months of flying on active service, with only ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... all caused by artillery fire by any means. Fritz had a large and varied assortment of "Minenwerfer" with which to entertain us at all hours, day and night. A good many people, even among the soldiers themselves, think that Minenwerfer or "Minnie" for short, is the name of the projectile or torpedo, while, as a matter of fact, it is the instrument which throws it; a literal translation being "mine-thrower." In the same way they often speak of the shells thrown by trench mortars as "trench mortars" themselves. Now the family of "Minnies" is a large one and includes every ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... were in position. The French were quickly disabled by the Germans, and even the head gunner was severely wounded. I took him on my shoulders, and got him out of the line of fire. The Bavarians sent another shrapnell shell after us, and, as the projectile burst over our heads, I felt a blow on the leather rim of my kepi. "A shrapnel splinter!" I thought, scornfully: "could it not have hit me a little more to the right, and have ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... I dive, I twist in figures of eight, I fight my way by inches against the wind, and, turning, I shoot back upon its current with the speed of a projectile. I am shaken and buffeted until I gasp for breath. I swerve, I dance, I caracole—I pirouette on a wing tip, catching my side slips on the rudder as one plays cup and ball. I dangle myself at the ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... expeditions he ate all the living beings he encountered fastened to the rocks by antennas and arms. The friction of the great, terrified fish that fled, bumping against him with the violence of a projectile, used to ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Two pieces of feather, properly bound at the lower end of the shaft, gave the arrow a rotary motion as it passed through the air, and insured a greater accuracy. It is a principle that has been adopted by manufacturers of modern rifle guns to impart to the projectile a ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... perfect right to your own ideas concerning the education of your cadets!" he shouted. "But I have a right to my ideas regarding my space projectile operations. I've devoted a good part of my life to this plan, and I will not allow anything, or anyone, to ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... the boy spoke, a muffled roar was distinctly heard by the lads in the submarine. A crash that reverberated through every portion of the vessel told that they had been hit by a projectile. ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... of powder and costs one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars to fire that great gun once. We saw the steel plate, sixteen inches thick, through which a twelve-inch shot had been fired. It had cracked the plate and thrown the upper corner half a yard away. I forgot to say the projectile fired from that gun weighs a ton, and goes ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... head sank down as if the blow had been too severe for her. But, almost immediately recovering herself, she launched a last projectile at ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... invented some time in the early part of the ninth century,[4] and the art of book-binding was known as early as A. D. 750.[5] The application of Gunpowder as a projectile was made in 1225; and the invention of the Loom is dated a ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... engine, older than the steam machine by nearly four hundred years, is the gun. Reduced to its principle this is an engine whose operation depends upon the expansion of gas in a cylinder, the piston being a projectile. The same principle applies in all the machines we know as "engines." An air-engine works through the expansion of air in a cylinder by heat. A gas-engine, now of common use, by the expansion, which is explosion, caused ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... contracted for fourteen batteries of the James rifled gun, 6-pounder calibre, and a limited quantity of the James projectiles, weighing about fourteen pounds each. The reports showing the superiority of this gun and projectile, both as regards range, accuracy, and execution, for field service over that of all others at the battle of Fort Donelson, leads me to request that there be furnished to the State of Illinois in the shortest time practicable seven batteries of 12-pounder calibre James rifled guns, with carriages, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... all influences of the chase and of pastoral life are wanting, while in Melanesia, with its larger islands and larger number of land animals, hunting still plays an important part, and is the chief source of subsistence for many New Guinea villages.[929] Therefore a corresponding decay of projectile weapons is to be traced west to east, and is conspicuous in those crumbs of land constituting Polynesia and Micronesia. The limit of the bow and arrow includes the northeastern portion of the Philippine ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... gun is fired it recoils with almost as much force as urges forward the projectile. It is the triumph of the military engineer that he anticipates and provides for this recoil when designing the weapon. Nations prepare for war, but do not, as the military engineer in his sphere does, ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... profit by our example? We don't wish to blow up, but gently to 'disintegrate. We are mild, but firm. We never express a wish for revolution, but for reform. We are as active as anyone in bringing about the Millennium, but we don't desire to be shot into it head foremost, like a projectile from one of your infernal machines. Dynamite, that last infirmity of noble minds, should only be resorted to when all other modes of conciliation have failed." And what do you think he replied? He smiled affably and offered me a box. "Thank you!" he ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... rising wave of voices from the crowd. Some men came forward for weapons; Rynason saw others drawing knives and hatchets, and a few of them had heavy guns, projectile type. Rynason watched with narrowed eyes; it had been a filthy maneuver on Manning's part to organize this mob, and his open acceptance of their temper was dangerous. Once they were turned loose, what could ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... then, a hastily erected, and still more hastily designed, building in a dirty, paper-littered back street of London, and a number of shabbily dressed men coming and going in this with projectile swiftness. Within this factory companies of printers, tensely active with nimble fingers—they were always speeding up the printers—ply their typesetting machines, and cast and arrange masses of metal in a sort of kitchen inferno, above which, in ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... to be able to bear a considerable charge, and also have an enormous range. In fact, as regards practical effect, the transit described by the ball ought to be as extended as possible, and this tension could only be obtained under the condition that the projectile should be impelled with ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... any other braves, with cicatrices: on the contrary, it is a known fact that cannon-balls make wounds, and not cicatrices (which, my dear, are wounds partially healed); nay, that a man generally dies after receiving one such projectile on his chest, much more after having his bosom furrowed by a score of them. No, my love; no bosom, however heroic, can stand such applications, and the author only means that the French soldiers faced the cannon and took them. Nor, my love, must you suppose that the ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... animation. What is to be done with this apparatus? How fetter this stupendous engine of destruction? How anticipate its comings and goings, its returns, its stops, its shocks? Any one of its blows on the side of the ship may stave it in. How foretell its frightful meanderings? It is dealing with a projectile, which alters its mind, which seems to have ideas, and changes its direction every instant. How check the course of what must be avoided? The horrible cannon struggles, advances, backs, strikes right, strikes ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... the summer of 1946, a year before the first UFO sighting in the U.S. There were many different descriptions for the reported objects. They were usually seen in the hours of darkness and almost always traveling at extremely high speeds. They were shaped like a ball or projectile, were a bright green, white, red, or yellow and sometimes made sounds. Like their American cousins, they were always so far away that no details could be seen. For no good reason, other than speculation ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... hot; the picture of these dogs of the wild kindred attacking his helpless friend had roused to fighting fury every last little drop of blood in his whole great body. Rage almost blinded him. He flung himself upon the big dingo as though he were a projectile of some sort. And then he learned that the creatures born in the wild are swifter than the swiftest of other creatures. He had learned it before, as a matter of fact; he had seen a striking illustration ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... of August 15, 1870, a stray projectile from a Prussian gun mortally wounded the Colonel of the 10th Regiment of the Line. The obscure gunner never knew that he had done away with one of the most intelligent officers of our army, one of the most forceful writers, one of the most clear-sighted philosophers whom sovereign ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... past. The crimson horror beyond those windows grew dull and then black. In the blunt nose of their craft a tiny crevice must have opened. The one who drove that projectile in its shrieking flight had touched another control that Rawson had not before seen. And with a piercing shriek a thin jet of cold air drove ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... were no longer discernible did I venture to flash my little lamp upon my compass, and then I found to my consternation that a fragment of the projectile had utterly destroyed my only guide, as well as my speedometer. It was true I could follow the stars in the general direction of Helium, but without knowing the exact location of the city or the speed at which I was traveling my chances ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with observations on projectiles, regarding which Galileo was the first to entertain correct notions. According to the current idea, a projectile fired, for example, from a cannon, moved in a straight horizontal line until the propulsive force was exhausted, and then fell to the ground in a perpendicular line. Galileo taught that the projectile ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... navigator, he is not fit to take charge of his Majesty's ships. The boatswain and carpenter are merely practical men; but the gunner, sir, is, or ought to be, scientific. Gunnery, sir, is a science—we have our own disparts and our lines of sight—our windage, and our parabolas, and projectile forces—and our point blank, and our reduction of powder upon a graduated scale. Now, sir, there's no excuse for a gunner not being a navigator; for knowing his duty as a gunner, he has the same mathematical tools to work with." Upon this principle, Mr Tallboys had added John Hamilton Moore to ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... a matter of fact the path of a projectile in vacuo is only approximately a parabola. It is instructive to remember that it is really an ellipse with one focus very distant, but not at infinity. One of its foci is the centre of the earth. A projectile is really a minute satellite of the earth's, and in vacuo it ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge |
