Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Automatical   Listen
adjective
Automatical, Automatic  adj.  
1.
Having an inherent power of action or motion. "Nothing can be said to be automatic."
2.
Pertaining to, or produced by, an automaton; of the nature of an automaton; self-acting or self-regulating under fixed conditions; operating with minimal human intervention; esp. applied to machinery or devices in which certain things formerly or usually done by hand are done by the machine or device itself; as, the automatic feed of a lathe; automatic gas lighting; an automatic engine or switch; an automatic mouse; an automatic transmission. The opposite of manual. Note: Narrower terms are: autoloading(prenominal), semiautomatic; automated, machine-controlled, machine-driven; self-acting, self-activating, self-moving, self-regulating; self-locking; self-winding. Also See: mechanical.
3.
(Physiol.) Not voluntary; not depending on the will; mechanical; controlled by the autonomic nervous system; without conscious control; as, automatic movements or functions. The opposite of voluntary.
Synonyms: reflex(prenominal), reflexive,involuntary "Unconscious or automatic reasoning."
4.
Like the unthinking functioning of a machine. "An automatic 'thank you'"
Synonyms: automaton-like, automatonlike, machinelike, machine-like, robotlike.
Automatic arts, such economic arts or manufacture as are carried on by self-acting machinery.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Automatical" Quotes from Famous Books



... death; but, unless it is projected with the knowledge of (whether latent or potential), or owing to the intensity of the desire to see or appear to some one shooting through, the dying brain, the apparition will be simply automatical; it will not be due to any sympathetic attraction, or to any act of volition, any more than the reflection of a person passing unconsciously near a mirror is due to the ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant

... themselves for measurement was old Manuel, sacristan from Xaya; he is a h'men, and we had hoped that he would show us the method of using the sastun, or divining crystal. He is a full-blood, and neither in face nor manner shows the least emotion. Automatic in movement, he is quiet and phlegmatic in manner; having assumed the usual indian pose for rest, a squat position in which no part of the body except the feet rests upon the ground, or any support, he sat quietly, ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... One impeccably rigorous analysis showed that the ship would shift into the nearest solar system possessing an Earth-type planet; which was believed to be Alpha Centauri and which was close enough to Sol so that orientation would be automatic and the return to Earth ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... had come to the ages of thirty-five and twenty-six without any wish for confidence, and why should they wish to confide in Henrietta? She was not wise and she was not sympathetic. The mere fact that they lived in the same house with her caused no automatic opening of the heart. Well on in middle life, William became engaged, and suddenly poured out everything to his love, but for the present he and Harold were content to go through life never saying anything about themselves to anybody. ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor

... more than a pleasant and curious memory. His mind was exercised superficially, not in thinking, but in wondering how it was he had come to kiss a strange woman. He said to himself that such conduct was not right; but this statement was no more than the automatic working of a mind long exercised in the distinctions of right and wrong, for, almost in the same breath, he assured himself that what he had done did not matter in the least. His opinions were undergoing a curious change. Right and wrong were meeting and blending ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... play. Acting is the lowest of the arts. And even if it were the highest, it would be brought low again by its infinite self-repetition. Imagine playing one part for a season, a year, a decade. Actors are not even parrots—they are automatic puppets that move their limbs in fixed fashions, and make squeaking sounds at prescribed moments. There was a French Minister of Education who drew up a most rigid Time-Code, which hung in his bureau; and it was the joy of his life to take out his watch and say 'Half-past three! Ha! every boy ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... poor domestic service, but improving domestic: 90% of telephone network is automatic; trunk network is mostly microwave radio relay, with some fiber-optic cable; about one-third of exchange capacity is digital; roughly 3,300 villages have no service international: country code - 40; satellite earth station - 1 Intelsat; new digital, international, direct-dial ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... education need to be so well learned that they are practically automatic, and can hence be skillfully performed without thought or attention. We must know our spelling in this way, so that we do not have to stop and think how to spell each word. In the same manner we must know the mechanics of reading, that is, the recognition ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts

... fashion. It is now known to be highly plastic in many cases, to vary considerably in individuals, and to involve conscious processes, thought, feeling and will, at any rate of an elementary kind. Again, how are you going to isolate an instinct? Those few automatic responses to stimulation that appear shortly after birth, as, for instance, sucking, may perhaps be recognized, since parental training and experience in general are out of the question here. But what about the instinct or group of instincts answering to sex? This ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... are not absolutely insignificant. When the insects acquired wings they must also have acquired the mechanism with which to move them—the musculature, and the nervous apparatus necessary for its automatic regulation. All instincts depend upon compound reflex mechanisms and are just as indispensable as the parts they have to set in motion, and all may have arisen through processes of selection if the reasons which I have elsewhere given for this view are correct. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... prisoners, and in fact about everything except their individual safety. With wild yells of terror they scattered this way and that, all except the sergeant. He, seeing his men running in every direction, snarled out a curse, and whipped out his automatic pistol. ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall

... is to be the packer of currency under James F. Meline, the Assistant Treasurer of the United States, who, says that his is a place where automatic safeguards and checks fail, and where the government must trust to the honesty of ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson

... "I have an automatic pistol," she remarked seriously, tapping her fur-coat pocket, "—and a pair of handcuffs—the sort that open and lock when you strike a man on the wrist with them. You know ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... been said above is at all correct, it would seem as if the walls separating various minds one from another all of a sudden are opened wide, and by a partial interpenetration of one mind by the other the several minds join together to produce by mutual determination automatic action. And it is in these special psychical states that "supernormal" phenomena, viz., ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann

... major concluded he drew from behind him a leather case which he sprung open as he presented it to the astonished master of the institution. There, in the case, rested a very fine automatic pistol, its polished handle engraved with Colonel Colby's name and also the fact that it was presented to him by the school, with the date. The hat had been passed around among the boys for contributions to this gift, and every cadet had ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield

... curriculum and equally able instructors, the one with the widest reputation will turn out the best graduates because it attracts abler men from a wider field. This is true even in such a department as athletics. To him that hath shall be given. This is purely an automatic ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... The automatic parachutes had suddenly sprung into operation when he reached a critical speed, and he had slowed down and stopped tumbling. He fell more gently, feet first, and when he landed it was with a shock that jarred but ...
— Divinity • William Morrison

... Barbuda general assessment: NA domestic: good automatic telephone system international: country code - 1-268; 1 coaxial submarine cable; satellite earth station - 1 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean); tropospheric scatter to ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... universal of which there may be many instances. It follows also that an "event" must be something short of the whole state of the universe, since it is highly improbable that this will recur. What is meant by an "event" is something like striking a match, or dropping a penny into the slot of an automatic machine. If such an event is to recur, it must not be defined too narrowly: we must not state with what degree of force the match is to be struck, nor what is to be the temperature of the penny. For if such considerations were relevant, our "event" would ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... but even when the mountains were huge and black against flaming colors of the horizon sky, there was no breaking of Marianne's gloom. Now and then, hopelessly, she raised her field glasses and swept a segment of the compass. But it was an automatic act, and her own forecast of failure obscured her vision, until at last, saddle-racked, trembling with weariness and grief, she stopped the ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... on the five o'clock afternoon train, carrying with him a suitcase and an automatic pistol in his ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... read a great deal and thought a great deal, and my ideas are still in a state of transition,' she told Lesbia; and Lesbia, who was somewhat automatic in her piety, had no desire to ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... destiny-like march which is so dramatic in its operations—that sense of the presence there of a power greater than that of the greatest of the men concerned in the administration of it, which constitutes on large element in an Englishman's respect for the law. At times this automatic power, which has been thus created Faust-like, by reason of the impossibility of pre-adapting its mechanism to the exigences of every case, works to unforseen and undesired ends—sometimes even to absurd ones. And, with thinkers of a certain phase ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... in the shop and all sorts of outside appointments to keep, not to speak of my brief trips as traveling salesman. To all of which I attended with automatic regularity, with listless doggedness. The union was a constant source of worry. In addition, there was a hitch in my relations with the "marriage broker." But even my worrying seemed to ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... looked at the breech of that rifle. Without questioning, he had followed the mountaineer's example. There were fifty spare cartridges in his own pockets. His .303 was freshly cleaned and oiled. He had tested the mechanism of his automatic. MacDonald had watched him, and both understood what such preparations meant as they set out on this last day's journey into the North. They had not kept from Joanne the fact that they would reach the end before night, and as they rode the ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... Strangely automatic is the human brain. Without volition, without effort, there shot into the memory of this bewildered, staggering, half-stupefied man the one thing which could have saved him—that blind eye of which the Master's son had spoken. It was the same as the other to look ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... less dramatic form, but we should all think more sanely and act more wisely if we interposed a definite revision by the conscious mind and will of all our plans and ideals between their (perhaps quite automatic) formation in our imagination and their translation into fact. Slack muscle should go with the daydream or picture of the future; we should not strike or clench or lift until we have decided that the action is right and just and wise. The girl who counted her chickens and broke the eggs ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... tossed from hand to hand in self-defence until it burst and injured the plaintiff. Here even human agencies were a part of the chain between the defendant's act and the result, although they were treated as more or less nearly automatic, in order to ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... an ordnance officer who fired a gun, that was tested for but two hundred rounds without heating, five hundred times and thus cracked it, he would probably be discharged. If the superintendent in a factory doubled the number of hours he was running his automatic machinery, and instead of doubling the amount of oil actually cut it in half and thus ruined the machines, he would be regarded as a fool. Yet we are letting our men, high in executive positions, heads of departments in ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp

... supply is a carburetor or sprayer, from which the cylinder C (Fig. 130) receives a fine mist of gasoline vapor and air. This mixture is ignited by an automatic, electric sparking device, and the explosion of the gases drives the piston P to the right. In the 4-cycle type of gas engines (Fig. 130)—the kind used in automobiles—the four strokes are as follows: 1. The mixture of gasoline and air enters the cylinder as the piston moves to the right. 2. ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... productions. Labor obtains these materials, works upon them, and fashions them to human use. Now it has been the object of scientific art, or of the application of science to art, to increase this active agency, to augment its power, by creating millions of laborers in the form of machines all but automatic, all to be diligently employed and kept at work by the force of natural powers. To this end these natural powers, principally those of steam and falling water, are subsidized and taken into human employment. Spinning-machines, power-looms, and all the mechanical devices, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... inside the glass doors indicated a temperature of 95 deg. Fahrenheit. I noticed that there was an automatic arrangement connected with the ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... that momentous era in the industrial history of the world; and the nineteenth century, as Watt clearly foresaw, has been emphatically the age of steam power. In the condenser, the high pressure cylinder and the automatic cut-off, which utilises the expansive power of steam vapour, mankind now possesses the means of taming a monster whose capacities were almost entirely unknown to the ancients, and of bringing it into ready and willing service ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... settee. A gentleman who showed so much irritation at her ill-timed slumbers, that I think he must have been her husband, was trying to awaken her with actions not far removed from shakings. All in vain; she was quite unconscious of his annoyance, or the smiles of the company, or the automatic solemnity of the waiting footman, or the perplexed anxiety ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... could even struggle the door was wrenched open and two figures darted out and joined in the melee. It was soon over. Three to one are heavy odds. The sentry, gagged and securely bound, was hustled inside the cabin. His hat, overcoat, and automatic were appropriated for Jim Spurling, who took his place. So skilfully had the coup been conducted under cover of the disturbance in the cove that none of the other smugglers had ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... to conclude that the brick house did belong to somebody, after all. Wherefore, she remained in her own yard, a steadfast spectator, taking nourishment into her system at regular intervals. This was beautifully automatic: in each hand she held a slice of bread, freely plastered over with butter, apple sauce, and powdered sugar; and when she had taken somewhat from the right hand, that hand slowly descended with its burden, while, simultaneously, the left began to rise, reaching the ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... two or three automatic servants beyond the public contribution, which they destroyed in private. Their more average neighbors crowded into their gardens for the awesome festivities. The next morning everyone could return to work, renewed ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner

... THE WORLD. This, sir, and you know it as well as I do, is nothing so out of date. It is Number 2613 of the five thousand Attraction Houses controlled by the Hustle Trust Circuit of Automatic Drama: President, Mr. Theodor B. Kedger. But it is located on 99th Street, New ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker

... as long as children retain consciousness, a particular part of the head is not commonly pointed out, but asked about it the majority point to the forehead. With small children automatic movements are noticed that also seem to refer to headache, and which consist in rapidly placing the hand on the head and then drawing ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum

... right now!" Darrin challenged. Swiftly he changed the revolver into his left hand as he still covered the pair. Then he reached for his own automatic, ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... great staple trades of this country, you have powerful organisations on both sides, with responsible leaders able to bind their constituents to their decisions, conjoined with automatic scales, or arbitration or conciliation in case of a deadlock, there you have a healthy condition of bargaining, which increases the competitive power of the industry, which continually weaves more closely together the ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... which is remembered, in the sense of learned by heart, has ALL the marks of a habit. Like a habit, it is acquired by the repetition of the same effort. Like every habitual bodily exercise, it is stored up in a mechanism which is set in motion as a whole by an initial impulse, in a closed system of automatic movements, which succeed each other in the same order and together take the same length of time. The memory of each several reading, on the contrary, has NONE of the marks of a habit, it is like an event in my ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... single perfume or a blending of as many kinds as one may wish. The wonderful variety of these choice blendings, which can be so easily produced, affords a constant succession of sweet surprises. The melophones which you hear, represent the highest achievement of art in the production of automatic musical instruments. This set is the most complete and the most expensive one in existence. In construction and final completion they cost the inventor and maker three years of constant thought and labor. The result is truly marvellous. The perfection of harmony and purity of tone are convincing ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... however minute may be the changes required in the cells or fibres of the brain, to set in motion the nerve currents which loosen or excite the pent up forces of certain muscles, some force must be required to effect those changes. If it is said, "those changes are automatic, and are set in motion by external causes," then one essential part of our consciousness, a certain amount of freedom in willing, is annihilated; and it is inconceivable how or why there should have arisen any consciousness or any apparent will, in such purely automatic organisms. If this ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... the hinge of this rod next appears to divide the wing into two, the second portion passing under the first, and thus bringing the wing down to half its original size. By this time the mechanical or automatic folding process stops, and the rest of the folding up has to be done by the aid of the pincers at the end of the body. Finally the packing up is complete, and the two hard outer cases, like a couple ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... side, a fact gratefully appreciated by one's next neighbor. What is more awkward than the arm projected, holding the fork pointing backward at a right angle to the lips, the mouth opening wide like an automatic railway gate to an approaching locomotive—the labored and ostentatious way in which food is sometimes transported to its destination? Nor, once in the mouth, is it lost to sight forever. Other people, seated opposite, are compelled to witness it in successive stages of the grinding ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... reason. Jo Portugais saw that memory was gone; that the past was blotted out. He had watched that first terrible struggle of memory to reassert itself, as the eyes mechanically looked out upon new and strange surroundings, but it was only the automatic habit of the sight, the fumbling of the blind soul in its cell-fumbling for the latch which it could not find, for the door which would not open. The first day on the raft, as Charley had opened his eyes upon the world again after that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... mischief Silver was a star performer. What other fire-horse ever mastered the intricacies of the automatic halter release? It was Silver, too, that picked from the Captain's hip-pocket a neatly folded paper and chewed the same with malicious enthusiasm. The folded paper happened to be the Company's annual report, in the writing of which the Captain ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford

... outside himself. From some conning-tower in this fourth dimension he perceived himself eating broiled lobster and drinking champagne and heard himself bearing an adequate part in the conversation; but his movements were largely automatic. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse

... swinging carelessly at the belligerent farmer. The man was not long in that country, but he was long enough to know the difference between a shotgun and an automatic forty-five. He ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... Adams is a salt-water village on Malaita, and Malaita is the most savage island in the Solomons—so savage that no traders or planters have yet gained a foothold on it; while, from the time of the earliest beche-de-mer fishers and sandalwood traders down to the latest labor recruiters equipped with automatic rifles and gasolene engines, scores of white adventurers have been passed out by tomahawks and soft-nosed Snider bullets. So Malaita remains today, in the twentieth century, the stamping ground of the labor recruiters, who farm its coasts for laborers who engage and contract themselves ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

... woodland, crossed a tiny divide where the afternoon sunshine was wine-colored by the manzanita and rose-colored by madronos, and dipped down through a young planting of eucalyptus to the Little Meadow. But before they reached it, they dismounted and tied their horses. Dick took the .22 automatic rifle from his saddle- holster, and with Paula advanced softly to a clump of redwoods on the edge of the meadow. They disposed themselves in the shade and gazed out across the meadow to the steep slope of hill that came down to it a hundred ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... note of a warning gong, the flash of red light on the control board. They were off automatic, from here on in it was all Kip's work. Dane strapped down at the silent com-unit and was startled a moment later when it spat words at him, translated from ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... system is a great social co-operation. It is automatic and instinctive in its operation. The adjustments of the organs take place naturally. The parties are held together by impersonal force—supply and demand. They may never see each other; they may be separated by half the circumference ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner

... famous contralto possesses apparently two voices, so marked is the break. There is a technical alteration of the working of the vocal chords at a certain pitch, but with a rightly-used voice this is automatic and unfelt: the whole body is full of such wonderful adjustments. To be called upon to deal consciously with such details is generally proof that they have gone wrong. Your attention to your digestion is ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt

... from his post on account of grave negligence caused by Flore, who distracted his attention in order that he might allow the Havre express to dash into a train loaded with ballast. The accident was only averted by a new automatic signalling ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... those times of ecstasy—occurring mostly in the night—when I would write and write so rapidly that morning would find me often not able to decipher the greater part of what I had written ... five or ten poems in a night ... scrawled madly almost like automatic writing.... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... schools have been furnished with automatic stamp vending machines, from which savings stamps in as small denominations as ten pfennigs (2-1/2 cents) may be had by dropping a coin into a slot.[10] This method could be used very effectively in connection ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... rushing toward him. At the same instant the scout boat suddenly moved forward. From the spy boat a pistol-shot rang out. Before another could follow, an electric torch was shining full on the spy craft, and the agent in the scout boat was covering the fugitives with his automatic. ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... saw in my cup, in perfect copperplate writing, the word "wait." I was annoyed by it, for what is more annoying than having to wait? Sometimes it may happen that the tea-leaves—as with their relatives, the tumbler and automatic writing—become a little shaky in their spelling. But this is not a serious defect, and the trifling errors do not prevent the word from being translatable. It is a recognised fact that writing seen through ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent

... the story afloat. Her tongue is self acting. But she had no reason to do so save in her imagination and her love of talking. Half the troubles in life are caused by your automatic talkers." ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major

... to one of his calling. Then he closed the safe door, closed the tapestry upon it and turned toward a dainty dressing table. From a drawer in this exquisite bit of Sheraton the burglar took a small, nickel plated automatic, which he slipped into an inside breast pocket of his coat, nor did he touch another article therein or thereon, nor hesitate an instant in the selection of the drawer to be rifled. His knowledge of the apartment of the daughter of the house of Prim was ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... and enter into explanations with bulls when they look "horstile." A swift get-away is the thing to do. It took me some time to learn this; but the finishing touch was put upon me by a bull in New York City. Ever since that time it has been an automatic process with me to make a run for it when I see a bull reaching for me. This automatic process has become a mainspring of conduct in me, wound up and ready for instant release. I shall never get over it. Should I be eighty years old, ...
— The Road • Jack London

... almost automatic—his left hand was clasping her right, and he was moving along the rock ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... "sooveneers"; and by Mr. SINCLAIR COTTER as Alf, the cynical humourist—"Where were you eddicated, Eton or Harrod's?" is one of his best mots—who spends most of his time in wrestling with an automatic cigar-lighter. I think it would be only poetical justice if in the concluding scene, when Old Bill comes into his own, the authors were for once to allow Alf to succeed in lighting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various

... automatic telephone system domestic: NA international: country code - 423; linked to Swiss networks by cable and ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... sent off its automatic signal, the ship lay dead in space. It did not drive toward Weald. It did not respond to signals. It drifted like a derelict upon no course at all. It seemed ominous, and since it came from Orede, the ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster

... China, and to any living soul you obtain no access, or next to none,—such disastrous roods of etiquette are interposed between. It is as if one very cordially shook hands with you by means of a pair of tongs or a ten-foot pole. Indeed, it is hardly a man that you meet; it is a piece of automatic ceremony. Nor is it in China alone that men may be found who can hardly be accredited with proper personality. As one dying may distribute his property in legacies to various institutions and organizations,—so much, for example, to the Tract Society, so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... of a clock work attachment. The inventor had all the minor details very plausibly worked out, such as locating by means of pilot balloons the air currents at the proper height for the large balloons, automatic arrangements for keeping the balloon at the proper height after it was let go from the vessel, and so on. His scheme is nothing but the idea of the drifting or current torpedo, which was so popular during our war, transferred to the upper air. An automatic flying machine would be one step ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various

... has also been dealt with in The Hague Convention, No. viii. of 1907, ratified with a reservation, by Great Britain on November 27, 1907. By Art. 1 it is forbidden "(1) to lay unanchored automatic-contact mines, unless they are so constructed as to become harmless one hour at most after he who has laid them has lost control over them; (2) to lay anchored automatic-contact mines which do not become harmless ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland

... and travelling have also undergone wonderful changes. The much-abused horse has vanished from cities entirely, and is not permitted to enter them, greatly to the preservation of health and cleanliness. All our vehicles have the automatic electric attachment and move along briskly through the clean wide streets. The handsome electric tricycles we are so familiar with, were hardly thought of a hundred years ago; now there are few men who do not possess a single or ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius

... plants, the habits of one race of fishes, suffice for the exclusive study of half a lifetime. Minds of a more active or more practical bent will spend an equal time over the construction of a new machine more absolutely automatic than any that has preceded it. Physical labour is thrown as much as possible on the young; and even they are now so helped by machinery and by trained animals, that the eight hours' work which forms their day's labour hardly tires their ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... passing of liners, for they were safe in the harbor of the lower levels. He moved the controls once to avoid the green glare of an ascending area, then he knew that there were no ships to fear, and let the automatic control put ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... hatching more than fifty chicks. Incubators are a constant care. The most important objection to an incubator is that it is against the rules of most fire insurance companies to allow it to be operated in any building that the insurance policy covers. If the automatic heat regulator fails to work and the heat in our incubator runs up too high we may have a fire. At any rate, we shall lose our entire hatch. The latter is also true if the lamp goes out and the eggs become too cool. I have made a great many hatches with incubators of different makes and my experience ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... stood watch on the ramparts of the baron's castle—now he walks the block and lifts his finger to suspicious persons. In the old days he wore his armour on the outside and carried a spear. Now he wears a hidden coat of mail and carries concealed two automatic guns. ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... carried to camp No. 2, where Bud, who was a pretty good cow-camp surgeon, examined his wound. A ball from an automatic revolver had struck him in the breast, but on account of the thickness of the clothing he wore, and the fact that he had on a heavy vest of caribou hide, in the pocket of which he carried a small memorandum book, the ball had penetrated only ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... difference—it was happiness now, the misery belonged to tomorrow. But suddenly that last unrealized fact—at once immaterial and the most leaden reality of all—lost its weight. The greater freedom she had lately grown into became an absolute indifference, a half willful and half automatic shutting of her eyes to everything but the present, the actuality of Gerrit Ammidon walking by her side. She wanted him to speak, so that she could discover his thoughts, feelings; yet she was reluctant to have ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... committed another forepaugh by showing that a wonderful boat invented by Giovanni de Medici for the purpose of fighting hostile ships, would not work, since there were no men on board to guide it, and its automatic steering apparatus would as likely run its nose into land, as into the hull of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... another opposite the lens of a camera; and as each was exposed, the clockwork that moved it produced an electric spark, so as to represent such a series of effects as the successive positions of a horse in trotting. My father, it seemed, was of a scientific turn, and had just perfected this new automatic machine before his sudden death. I listened with breathless interest; for up to that time I had never been allowed to hear anything about my father—anything about the great tragedy with which my second life began. It was wonderful to me even now to be allowed to speak and ask questions ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... fibers represent a conducting apparatus and serve to place the central nervous organs in connection with peripheral end organs. The nerve cells, however, besides transmitting impulses, act as physiological centers for automatic, or reflex, movements, and also for the sensory, perceptive, trophic, and secretory functions. A nerve consists of a bundle of tubular fibers, held together by a dense areolar tissue, and inclosed in a membranous ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... the burner, with the object of saving the expense and room which would be involved by a storage-holder. Generators with devices for regulating and stopping at will the action going on are generally termed "automatic.'' Another set merely aims at developing the gas from the carbide and putting it into a storageholder with as little loss as possible, and these are termed "non-automatic.'' The points to be attained in a ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... minute to shove his automatic into his pocket and secure his rifle from the corner. Groping his way to the door he stood shivering on the threshold, staring into the thick gray fog ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... until we get to you, or you are a dead man," shouted Kennedy, pulling an automatic as he ran. ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... out an automatic "Sure," and Manuel an amazed "Si, senor," upon which they were ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... around Tom's shoulder, the big Venusian led him across the floor of the deserted gym, and as they disappeared through the automatic sliding doors, a tall figure in the uniform of the Solar Guard stepped out of the shadows on the balcony ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell

... theories was that The People were naturally aesthetic; that The People's own untutored instinct would always unerringly select the best; that it was an insult to the noble idealism of The People to try to educate them; they were, so to speak, born with an education, ready-made, automatic, in sound working order from the beginning. Now, anyone almost may have theories, but if they are wise souls they won't try to apply them. If they have never been practically tested they can't be proved fallacious and thus may be treasured and loved and petted indefinitely, to the comfort of the ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... phaeton, the hight of which is not increased by the machinery. The motor is started by a crank which is easily applied to a shaft in the rear of the carriage and the gasoline is ignited in the cylinder by electricity. An automatic device stops the flow of gasoline into the cylinder when the motor ceases running. The gasoline is carried in tanks, which hold about two gallons, and which will run the carriage for about eight hours. ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile

... Hardwicke. "She is only a girl, like other girls, I presume; but, this old fool is only fit for the old days, when the kings of Oude flew kites and hunted with the cheetah; or, half drunken, dozed, lolling away their lives in these marble-screened zenanas, with the automatic beauties of the seraglio. Our English cannon have knocked all that nonsense silly. Here is a high-spirited, Christian English girl, shut up like a slave. It's only the unfairness of the thing that strikes me." Hawke eyed the blue-eyed, rosy young fellow of twenty-six with an evident interest. Stalwart ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... French historians is doubtless correct in so far as English gold enabled our allies to arm efficiently; but it is wholly false if it implies that the Third Coalition was merely trumped up by our money, and that the Russian, Austrian, and Swedish Governments were so many automatic machines which, if jogged with coins, would instantly supply armies to the ready money purchaser. This is practically the notion still prevalent on the Continent; and it is clearly traceable to the endless diatribes against ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... but an insidiously attractive George. Her heart beat quickly. Her mind was not clear; but dimly she realized that he had pulled down her chief barrier of defense and that she was more open to attack than she had ever been. Obstinacy, the automatic desire to resist the pressure of a will that attempted to overcome her own, had kept her cool and level-headed in the past. With masterfulness she had been able to cope. Humility was another ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... in growing dread, for the automatic relays strung out through space to take hold, automatically calculating the route, set up the required space-jump bands. It was called instantaneous communication, but that was only ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... but are held by the mechanical action of certain muscles and tendons in the leg and foot. Of course, the bird can also control these muscles by an act of its will, but a large part of their action is automatic. In some species there is a muscle called the ambiens, which has its rise in the pelvis, passes along the inner side of the thigh, whence its tendon runs over the apex of the angle of the knee joint, and down the leg till it joins the muscles that flex the toes. Now when the bird's ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... tighter than he gripped the handlebars of his scooter. He was only vaguely aware of the passing scenery. He knew he should switch on the homing beacon and ride in on automatic, but it seemed like too much of an effort to flick his finger. As the tension rose, the capillaries of his eyes swelled, and things began to white out for him. The rush of landscape became blurred streaks of light and dark, now mostly ...
— The Planet with No Nightmare • Jim Harmon

... was in front of the room that held the wireless. His back was toward her, but she saw that he was holding the door to the room ajar, that his eye was pressed to the opening, and that through it he had pushed the muzzle of his automatic. What would be the fate of Anfossi Marie knew. Nor did she for an instant consider it. Her thoughts were of her own safety; that she might live. Not that she might still serve the Wilhelmstrasse, the Kaiser, or the Fatherland; but that she might live. In a moment Anfossi would ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis

... Browning is the father of rapid-fire and automatic firearms. His is the brain behind practically every basic small firearm invention in the past 40 years. He has been to the development of firearms what Edison has ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... Vedantins and the followers of Shankaracharya's philosophy, in talking of themselves, often avoid using the pronoun I, and say, "this body went," "this hand took," and so on, in everything concerning the automatic actions of man. The personal pronouns are only used concerning mental and moral processes, such as, "I thought," "he desired." The body in their eyes is not the man, but only a covering to ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... of personal righteousness have become to a majority of the community almost automatic. It is as easy for most of us to keep from stealing our dinners as it is to digest them, and there is quite as much voluntary morality involved in one process as in the other. To steal would be for us to fall sadly below the standard of habit and expectation which ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... found to be pretty well worn out (scant wonder, too) and therefore new works were put in and the dial was repaired. Evidently, long before, the clock had had at its base some revolving horseman which probably delighted the people of that time who were always pleased by automatic figures and scenes in pantomime. Many ancient clocks reflected this childish taste by having attached to them all sorts of figures representing the hours, days of the week, or feasts of the Church. Probably one reason for this was that as the education of the populace was too ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... segment rails six feet apart bolted to the solid rock, by this means dispensing with ties and permitting a free flow of water and slum. We found it necessary to build a chamber within the mouth of the tunnel sixty feet long, with automatic doors opening and shutting, to secure an abundance of air in the tunnel, and also in the observatory. The tunnel required no timbering, as we bored all the way through synetic granite and encountered very little water, and when we were about to break through at the summit we provided ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans

... notions concerning adjudication and actionability. The mere recognition of that psychological fact alters the conventional judgment but little; the failure in these cases consists in not having prevented that automatic transition of images into actions, a transition essentially natural to our organism which ought, however, like so many other things, to be subjected to power of the will.'' Reflex movements require closer study.[1] ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... its first fifty thousand, content with the mere touch of each other's hands, they are so sure of each other now. Past people, dozens of people, getting fewer and fewer as Forty-sixth Street comes, Forty-seventh, Forty-eighth, always a little arrogantly because none of the automatic figures they pass have ever eaten friendly bread together or had fire that can burn over them like clear salt water or the knowledge that the only thing worth having in life is the hurt and gladness of that fire. Buses pass like big squares ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com