"Chronometer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was a stereopticon which shot a beam of light through a tube to which I heard them refer as a galvanometer, about three feet distant. In front of this beam whirled a five- spindled wheel, governed by a chronometer which erred only a second a day. Between the poles of the galvanometer was stretched a slender thread of fused quartz plated with silver, only one one- thousandth of a millimetre in diameter, so tenuous ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... not go round by Inverness," he said, "We must not become too complicated with our machinery. Remember the get-at-ability of parts. If we go on as some mechanics are doing, we shall soon be boiling our eggs with a chronometer!" ...] that comes forth from our workshops, and merely show the mastery we possess over materials and mechanical forms. The original of this measuring machine of Maudslay's was exhibited at the Loan Collection at South Kensington ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... notices the passion for sailing which this seaman has, for he was trained on a sailing ship and had won many prizes in the regattas at Kiel. "But we had hardly any instruments," he narrated, "we had only one sextant and two chronometers on board, but a chronometer journal was lacking. Luckily I found an old 'Indian Ocean Directory' of 1882 on board; its information went back to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... he will want something of a chronometer, or watch—few gallants care to be without them ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... stars, Jacob, and rather bright ones," said Captain Solomon. "My chronometer—my clock, you know—was losing a good deal, and I looked through my sextant at them to find out where we ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins
... used Davis' instrument, then about ninety years old. Davis' work on navigation, with Wright's chart showing the northern extremity of Australia, and Addison's Arithmetical Navigation (1625) were, no doubt, text-books on board the Roebuck. Longitude by chronometer was to come half a century after Dampier was in his grave, and such charts as he possessed did little more than indicate the existence of Terra Australis. The Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch maps were not easy for Englishmen to procure, and all that Dampier has to ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... known as "Longitude" Harrison, was the inventor of watch compensation. He received, in slowly and reluctantly paid instalments, a sum of L20,000 from the Government, for producing a chronometer which should determine the longitude within half a degree. A watch which contained his latest improvements was worn by Captain Cook during his three years' circumnavigation of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the aberration of the fixed stars, and that of the nutation of the earth's axis; to these two discoveries, Delambre says, we owe the exactness of modern astronomy. It promoted the improvement of the thermometer, the measure of temperature, and in Harrison's watch, the chronometer, the measure of time. Through it the Gregorian Calendar was introduced into England, in 1752, against a violent religious opposition. Some of its Fellows were pursued through the streets by an ignorant and infuriated mob, who believed it had robbed them of eleven days ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... he said to me in Singapore, "draw up an agreement here, but will do so at Batavia," and forthwith we set sail for that place. Before leaving Singapore, however, Jensen bought some nautical instruments he could not get at Batavia—including compasses, quadrant, chronometer, &c. Strange to say, he did not tell me that his ship was named the Veielland until we had arrived at Batavia. Here the contract was duly drawn up, and the vessel fitted out for the voyage. I fancy this was the first ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... invention. Many years before, Sir Isaac Newton had called the attention of the British Government to the necessity for an accurate portable time-keeper at sea, to determine longitude, and in 1714 Parliament offered a reward of 20,000 pounds sterling for such a chronometer. Thenceforward for fifty years the inventive spirits of England and the Continent were secretly at work to produce a timepiece which would deserve the large reward, amongst them Charles Mason, who labored with such perfect discretion ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... power of man. However perfect or complete be human mechanism, it can only move by the application of some power inherent in matter; did not an elastic spring expand itself after being coiled, the chronometer would be a dead and lifeless mass; did not fluids obey the force of gravitation, and currents in the atmosphere the expansive power of heat, the water-wheel and wind-mill would be useless; did not water form vapour at elevated temperatures, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... to the Board of Health is conveyed in a word not so large as the other,—"Delay." I would suggest, in respect to this, that it would be very unreasonable to complain that a first- rate chronometer didn't go when its master had not wound it up. The Board of Health may be excellently adapted for going and very willing and anxious to go, and yet may not be permitted to go by reason of its lawful master having fallen into a gentle slumber and forgotten to set it a going. One of the speakers ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... and hot. The usual chart-rack overhead was full, and the chart on the table was kept unrolled by an empty cup standing on a saucer half-full of some spilt dark liquid. A slightly nibbled biscuit reposed on the chronometer-case. There were two settees, and one of them had been made up into a bed with a pillow and some blankets, which were now very much tumbled. The Northman let himself fall on it, his hands ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... by Capt. E. T. Morton. A short treatise on the simpler methods of finding position at sea by the observation of the sun's altitude and the use of the sextant and chronometer. It is arranged especially for yachtsmen and amateurs who wish to know the simpler formulae for the necessary navigation involved in taking a boat anywhere ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... "Here is a first-rate chronometer, made in London. It runs fifteen days without being wound. I gave it a turn of the key yesterday: it has, then, thirteen days to run. If I throw it on the ground, or if I break the main-spring, all is over. ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... period of 12,000 years, Vega in Lyra will shine forth as the brightest of all possible pole stars. These data give us some idea of the extent of the motions which, divided into infinitely small portions of time, proceed without intermission in the great chronometer of the universe. If for a moment we could yield to the power of fancy, and imagine the acuteness of our visual organs to be made equal with the extremest bounds of telescopic vision, and bring together that which is now divided by long periods of time, the apparent rest that ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... and diminutive signal cut sharp and black against the bright surface, and in the next instant was thrust away into the dusk again. But that ship, that captain, and that pregnant instant had had their work appointed for them in the dawn of time and could not fail of the performance. The chronometer ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... gold about my wrist was my Barsoomian chronometer—a delicate instrument that records the tals and xats and zodes of Martian time, presenting them to view beneath a strong crystal much after the manner ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Smith the Patrons' Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, he said: "You have not, like an ordinary explorer, made a common route survey, but you have made a scientific survey, a triangulation frequently checked by astronomical observations with theodolite and chronometer." ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... have time to fall. And the spectrum at once tells what the jets are composed of, whether hydrogen, gaseous iron, calcium, or anything else. Prof. C. A. Young saw a jet of hydrogen ascend a distance of 200,000 miles, measured its height, noted its spectrum and timed its ascent by a chronometer all at once, and was astonished to find the velocity one hundred and sixty miles per second—eight times faster than the earth flies on its orbit. By these improvements solar hurricanes, whirlpools, and explosions can be seen from any ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... His evenings, when pleasant, were spent in observing the heavens, and to the children, accustomed to seeing such observations going on, the important study in the world seemed to be astronomy. One by one, as they became old enough, they were drafted into the service of counting seconds by the chronometer, ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... fishing-nets, a forge, a cooper's workshop, and lastly, some cases belonging to the prime minister, Kraimokou, filled with all necessary appliances for navigation, such as compasses, sextants, thermometers, watches, and even a chronometer. Strangers were not allowed to inspect two other magazines in which were stored powder and other war-materials, strong liquors, iron, &c. All these places were for the present abandoned by the new sovereign, who held his ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... for the signal—the light in the apex of the capitol dome," she went on. "I understand the night must be perfectly clear; and you understand that the test is to be made promptly at three o'clock by your chronometer?" ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... Audubon's works here alluded to, was the same, we opine, as that generously presented by the illustrious savant to Mr. Martyn, chronometer-maker, St Peter street,—an ardent ornithologist, whose roof sheltered the great ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... suddenly changed its character. Certain rumours had reached headquarters, and the Emperor Nicholas appointed as colonel a stern disciplinarian of German origin, who aimed at making the regiment a kind of machine that should work with the accuracy of a chronometer. ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... sure by personal inspection that everything was in perfect order, consulted his chronometer, which he had carefully set a short time before with Chief Engineer Murphy's, who had been charged ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... sailed there is four minutes' difference of clock-time," Scott proceeded. "You know that a chronometer is a timepiece so nicely constructed and cared for, that it practically keeps perfect time. Meridians are imaginary great circles, and we are always on one of them. With our sextants we find when the centre of the sun is on the celestial meridian corresponding ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... said; "I shouldn't be surprised if we get a glimpse of the sun between the clouds presently. Will you get my sextant and the chronometer up, ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... of December, and the thermometer stands at eighty-five in the shade. I rise with the 'ganza grulla'—our bird chronometer—that wonderful creature of the crane species, with a yard of neck, and two-feet-six of legs. Every morning at six of the clock precisely, our grulla awakens us by half-a-dozen gurgling and metallic shrieks, in a tone loud enough to be heard by his Excellency the ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... our mules and make the rest of the way a-foot, as we considered them a nuisance, and as we had no baggage but my little satchel previously referred to, in which I had bills of lading of my houses, they being consigned to me, the specifications of my carpenter's schedule, my letters and a gold chronometer watch, worth $250, belonging to H., a broker in New York, a friend, and a bottle of the best brandy, which he presented to me to keep off the fever in crossing the Isthmus. This bag I handed to the guide boy, about seventeen years of age, taking out the brandy bottle. The watch ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... until the Bee's return. To flour one's legs with pollen, to distend one's crop with syrup is a task that takes long a-doing; and the intruder, therefore, has time and to spare wherein to commit her felony. Moreover, her chronometer is well-regulated and gives the exact measure of the Bee's length of absence. When the Halictus comes back from the fields, the Gnat has decamped. In some favourable spot, not far from the burrow, she awaits the opportunity ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... he saw from the chronometer, seven o'clock; and he rose charged with tense energy, engaged in activities of a far different order. He unwrapped from many folds of oiled silk a flat, amorphous pistol, uglier in its bleak outline ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the dispatch, puts on his coat, and rides downstairs. On the street he finds it is midnight. He looks for a carriage. He sets his watch by a jeweler's chronometer, over which a feeble gas flame burns ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... with his first letter. They fretted for a while, planning and erasing, till at last Edward, who was getting on the worst, asked what o'clock it was. And then it appeared that the Captain had forgotten, for the first time for many years, to wind up his chronometer; and they seemed, if not to feel, at least to have a dim perception, that time was beginning to be indifferent ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and admitted that this grave impeachment of the character of his chronometer, was not entirely without foundation, and that in consequence, the strict accuracy of the results arrived at, could ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... that the difference must be exactly proportional to the difference of longitude. So that a watch which is right in one place can not, strictly speaking, be right in any other place east or west of the first; and that, if the time of day at two places can be compared, either by taking a chronometer from one to another, or by observing some celestial phenomenon, like the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, and ascertaining precisely the time of their occurrence, according to the reckoning at both, the distance east or west by degrees may be determined. ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... with laughter. He appealed to Tenby constantly, as to the one man he knew in the room. Tenby it was who made the discovery of him somewhere in the City, where he earned his livelihood either as a corn-merchant; or a stockbroker, or a chronometer-maker, or a drysalter, and was always willing to gratify a customer with the sight of his proofs of identity. Mr. Tenby made it his business to push his clamorous waggishness for the exhibition. I could readily believe that my father was more than his match ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for blast-off," said Tom, and then turned to the logbook and jotted down the time in the ship's journal. The astral chronometer over the control board read ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... of sixty-one days the Deptford reached Port Royal, and the chronometer (for that is what this new sort of watch really was) proved to be only about nine seconds slow. Then followed the voyage home. William Harrison had been gone five months in all—five months which to his poor, anxious ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... been less strongly individual he would have accepted the general opinion and given Herbert Spencer up. As it was, he found Spencer's explanation of things convincing; and, as he phrased it to himself, to give up Spencer would be equivalent to a navigator throwing the compass and chronometer overboard. So Martin went on into a thorough study of evolution, mastering more and more the subject himself, and being convinced by the corroborative testimony of a thousand independent writers. The more he studied, the more vistas he caught of fields of knowledge yet unexplored, and ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... been told that Charlotte was going into the City to choose a new watch, wherewith to replace the ill-used little Geneva toy that had been her delight as a schoolgirl; and as Charlotte brought home a neat little English-made chronometer from a renowned emporium on Ludgate-hill, the simple matron accepted this explanation in all ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... factor, the way lies open to every kind of error. A machine is judged not by this or that train of wheels, but by the nature of the work accomplished. The monumental roasting-jack of a waggoners' inn and a Breguet chronometer both have trains of cogwheels geared in almost a similar fashion. (Louis Breguet (1803-1883), a famous Parisian watchmaker and physicist.—Translator's Note.) Are we to class the two mechanisms together? Shall we forget that the one turns a shoulder of mutton before the hearth, ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... Heinrich, No. 41 Maiden Lane, New York, Inventor Patentee, and Sole Manufacturer of the Self-Adjusting Chronometer Balance, which is not affected by "extremes of high and low temperatures, as fully demonstrated by a six months' test at the Naval Observatory at Washington, D. C., showing results in temperatures from 134 deg. down to 18 deg., of 5-10 of a second only, unparalleled in the history of horology ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... forty or fifty minutes, then a renewal of the hurricane was almost certainly to be expected. Without the loss of a moment he gave his orders. The boats were made ready; into one they put arms, ammunition, and tools, together with the ship's papers and chronometer, a compass, and Dr. Thesiger Smith's specimens and diaries; into the other more ammunition, and a portion of what provisions could be collected from above or below water. The boats were lowered, the men dropped ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... here's a frying-pan artificially flavoured with essence of beefsteaks to that degree that you've only got for the rest of your lives to fry bread and dripping in it and there you are replete with animal food; here's a genuine chronometer-watch, in such a solid silver case that you may knock at the door with it when you come home late from a social meeting, and rouse your wife and family and save up your knocker for the postman; and here's ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... was an excellent fit; and closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come, and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... vast solemnity. "Take care," said he. "There's odds of women, sir. They're like sheep's broth is women. If there's a heart and head in them they're good, and if there isn't you might as well be supping hot water. Faces isn't the chronometer to steer your boat to the good ones. Now I've seen some you ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... just parted with her cargo to a homeward bound ship, and was going to refit, and take in provisions and water at one of the Milanesian islands, before returning for further captures. The master was a man of the shrewd, hard money-making cast; but, at the price of Mr. Ernescliffe's chronometer, and of the services of the sailors, he undertook to convey them where they might fall in with packets bound ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... was left with the dog for company once more. A chronometer showed that the hour was past midnight. She knew sufficient of the sea to understand that the clock was probably accurate, as the course had practically followed the same meridian since the Kansas quitted Valparaiso. So the ship and those left on board had entered on another day! How little ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... thee." As Dr. Delitzsch says, "Because man in God's likeness has a bodily form, some have presumed to infer backwards therefrom that God also has a bodily form like to man, which is related by way of prototype to the human form." [125] As well might we say that because a watchmaker constructs a chronometer with a movement somewhat like that of his own heart, therefore he is mechanical, metallic, and round. Against this anthropomorphic materialism science lifts up its voice; for what modern philosopher, worthy of the name, fails to distinguish between phenomenon and fact, inert matter and ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... chronometer made by Boissonnas, of Geneva, set at the meridian of Hamburg, from which Germans calculate, as the English do from Greenwich, ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Vansittart. She pronounced the idea a good one, and as the time and conditions were alike favourable we forthwith proceeded to carry it out, she first taking a set of five sights for the determination of the longitude while I noted the chronometer times, and then, vice versa, I taking the sextant and she the chronometer. Then we adjourned to the chart-room and worked out our calculations independently, the results agreeing within ten seconds of longitude, or a difference of only a few hundred feet. This, of course, was quite ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... Minarets calling 'em to Prayers. Some of the rich Agas have Watches, bought or stolen out of Europe; but they are usually spoilt by the Women of the Harem playing with 'em. The Dey's principal Wife, Zoraide Khanum, is said to have boiled a large Gold Chronometer, made by Silvain of Paris, with Cream and Sweet Almonds. Yet does a remnant of their Ancestors' old skill in Arithmetic and Algebra linger among 'em; for whereas not One in Twenty Thousand can do an Equation (and Captain Blokes taught me, and I have ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Who dare declare that he ever saw our mouth dry? or sensible of a bitter taste, since we gave over munching rowans? Put your ringer on our wrist, at any moment you choose, from June to January, from January to June, and by its pulsation you may rectify Harrison's or Kendal's chronometer. ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... engagements, and of the worry and distress to patients and their friends which the want of it occasions? One of my old teachers always carried two watches, to make quite sure of being exact, and not only kept his appointments with the regularity of a chronometer, but took great pains to be at his patient's house at the time when he had reason to believe he was expected, even if no express appointment was made. It is a good rule; if you call too early, my lady's hair may not be so smooth as could ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... advice it was thought could not fail to be of service to them. They were also introduced to Captain Owen and to Mr. Lander, the value of whose experience in planning their operations was obvious. And the expedition being brought under the notice of his majesty's government, the loan of a chronometer was obtained for it, with strong letters of introduction and recommendation to the officers commanding the naval and military forces of the crown along the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... par M. Breger, Commission de Gavre, Sept. 1880) two screens are used. The wire of the first forms part of the circuit of an electromagnet which, so long as it is energized, supports a vertical rod called the "chronometer." Hence when the circuit is broken by the passage of a shot through the screen this rod drops. The wire of the second screen conveys a current through another electromagnet which supports a much shorter rod. This "registrar," as it is called, when released by the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... our Annie's pony, very quiet and respectful, with a bag of good victuals hung behind him, and two great cavalry pistols in front. And he always wore his meanest clothes as if expecting to be robbed, or to disarm the temptation thereto; and he never took his golden chronometer neither his bag of money. So much the girls found out and told me (for I was never at home myself by day); and they very craftily spurred me on, having less noble ideas perhaps, to hit upon Uncle Reuben's track, and follow, and see what became of him. For he ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Place document. At about twelve o'clock, midnight, the valet rushed in among the guests, who were discussing the odd circumstances, and said that his master was at the point of death. Lord Lyttelton had kept looking at his watch, and at a quarter past twelve (by his chronometer and his valet's) he remarked, 'This mysterious lady is not a true prophetess, I find.' The real hour was then a quarter to twelve. At about half-past twelve, by HIS watch, twelve by the real time, he asked for his physic. The valet went into the dressing- room to prepare it (to ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... me! The sextant and chronometer had both been broken beyond repair, and they had been broken just this very night. They had been broken upon the night that Lys had been seen talking with von Schoenvorts. I think that it was this last thought which hurt me the worst. I could look the other disaster in the face with equanimity; ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... glancing at the chronometer that hung beside the air-rules. "Time enough to get settled, later. Every second counts, now. We're due to start in seven minutes, you know. Rrisa will attend to all this. We three have got to be getting forward ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... knowing as he did the dangers with which we were surrounded. He was constantly observing the compass, and several times he got the chart of the African coast, and examined it in his own cabin. He told me also one morning to tend the chronometer for him, while he made a set of observations with the sextant to ascertain our exact longitude. When he had worked them out, his countenance assumed a graver aspect than I had ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... kept a regular journal, and travelled, I thought, more like a geographer than a fur-trader. He was provided with a sextant, chronometer and barometer, and during a week's sojourn which he made at our place, had an opportunity to make several astronomical observations. He recognised the two Indians who had brought the letter addressed to Mr. J. Stuart, and ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... soundly; for when I awoke the fire was out, and I saw by the chronometer that it was nearly eleven o'clock. But my sleep had done me great good, and I hurried on deck and ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... you are. Yes, you're as crazy as you c'n be. I tormented you, eh? Is that what I did? I picked you up outa the gutter! I fetched you outa the midst of a blizzard when you was standin' by the chronometer an' stared at the lamplighter with eyes that was that desperate scared! You oughta seen yourself! An' I hounded you, eh? Yes, to prevent the police an' the police-waggon an' the devil hisself from catchin' you! I left you no rest, eh? ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... convicts escaped, seized the boat, and were launching her when they were challenged by a sentry. One of them replied that they were going for Mr. Cunningham, and they got away though they were fired upon. They did go for Mr. Cunningham, and robbed him of his chronometer, pistols, tent, and provisions. Then they sailed away, and were picked up by a whaler, which they seized and finally scuttled. The Government refused to compensate Cunningham for his loss, and he had to replace ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... Norman could see his companion gripping the edge of the cockpit. There was little conversation, and in order to divert his companion, Norman manufactured a job for Paul by assigning to him the duty of watching the engine revolution gauge and the chronometer. ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... the first officer glanced down towards Mrs. Ogilvy, and held out his chronometer with an encouraging smile which seemed to say, "Only an hour and a half more now! At twelve, I ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... a small theodolite by Ramsden, and Kater's pocket compass [Note: A most valuable instrument, combining all the advantages of the circumferentor, without being so liable to be damaged and put out of order by carriage.], with the addition of an excellent sextant, pocket chronometer, and artificial horizon. I have to lament that our mountain barometers were broken at an early stage of the expedition; the height however of some principal points had been previously obtained, and is marked on the chart; these in two instances were verified ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... he went out into the cabin, closing the door upon his berth, and for lack of anything better to do, seated himself on the thwartships transom, against the forward bulkhead, behind the table. Above his head a chronometer ticked steadily and loudly, and, being consulted, told him that the time of day was twenty minutes to four; which meant that he had slept away some eighteen or twenty hours. That was a solid spell of a rest, when he came to think of it, even allowing ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... social disorders must be added elemental dangers of all kinds, such as the tides and shallows of the North Sea—the shallow waters contiguous to the coast being chiefly navigated—dangers against which neither compass nor chronometer was then available. Even buoys and lighthouses were comparatively rare or inadequate at a time when nautical knowledge itself was still extremely defective. It was therefore not astonishing that shipwrecks were of daily occurrence and were of course followed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... Cheshire, where they lived a quiet retired life, spending a good deal of their time with their friends Sir Charles and Lady Holte at Brereton. Edgeworth amused himself by making a clock for the steeple at Brereton, and a chronometer of a singular construction, which, he says,'I intended to present to the King ... to add to His Majesty's collection of uncommon clocks and watches which I had ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... the great schoolmaster of the race: necessity has been the mother of all great inventions. Ericsson began the construction of a screw-propeller in a bath-room. John Harrison, the great inventor of the marine chronometer, began his career in the loft of an old barn. Parts of the first steamboat ever run in America were set up in the vestry of an old church in Philadelphia by Fitch. McCormick began to make his famous reaper in an old grist-mill. The first model dry-dock ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... known her great-grandfather in her early years, and living to nurse great-grandchildren in her old age. The landlord of the inn informed us, with much pride, that Couvet was the birthplace of the man who invented a clock for telling the time at sea; by which, no doubt, he meant the chronometer, invented by M. Berthoud. At Motiers, the next village, Rousseau wrote his Lettres de la Montagne, and thence it was that he fled from popular violence to the island on the ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... the corkscrew, Todd,—I'll pick it out," remarked the major, examining the hazardous cork with the care of a watchmaker handling a broken-down chronometer. "You're right, St. George—it's too far gone. Don't watch me, Seymour, or I'll get nervous. You'll hoodoo it—you Scotchmen are the devil when it comes to anything fit to drink," and ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the watch too; it was a hundred-guinea chronometer, a masterpiece of Benson's workmanship; and Mr. Dunbar's arms were emblazoned upon the back. There was a locket attached to the massive gold chain, the locket ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... chronometer for the voyage was all that now worried me. In our newfangled notions of navigation it is supposed that a mariner cannot find his way without one; and I had myself drifted into this way of thinking. My old chronometer, a good one, had been long in disuse. It ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... When that chronometer, which was surmounted by a cheerful brass group of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, tolled five in a heavy cathedral tone, Mr. Osborne pulled the bell at his right hand—violently, and the butler ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Spilett had been preserved from the sea-water, as he had been thrown at once on the sand out of reach of the waves. It was an instrument of excellent quality, a perfect pocket chronometer, which the reporter had not forgotten to wind ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... lived on Mars all my life, I could not have had a more intimate knowledge of my surroundings. I seemed to know exactly how to proceed, and after attending to several important details, and carefully noting the temperature of the virator on a thermometer placed for that purpose, I consulted a chronometer to ascertain how long it would be safe for me to remain on Mars. I found that, allowing a half-hour for the process of arrival and the same for departure, I had just ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... haven't got to take my turn with the rest, in there,"—he indicated the church with his thumb,—"and you haven't got to make an appointment. You have got a clear forty minutes before the Angelus rings," he added, consulting a large silver chronometer, "and I reckon I kin git through my part of the job inside of twenty, leaving you ten minutes for remarks. I want ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... of the vessels through which I had searched had I found a sextant; nor would it have been of any use to me, had I found one, unless I had found also a chronometer still keeping time. Charts I did find; but as I had to know my position to get any good from them, and as I would run straight for any land that I sighted without in the least caring on what coast I made my landfall, I left them behind. My only aid to navigation ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... being Sunday I halted; especially as the cattle had made an unusually long journey the day before. I wished to take sights for the purpose of ascertaining the rate of my chronometer, and to lay down my surveys. I found that Mr. Oxley's points on this river were much too far to the westward; a circumstance to be expected as his survey could not, at that early age of the colony, be connected with Parramatta by actual measurement; as mine ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... August, is regularly perceived during the melting of the ice, on the parallel of the bank of Newfoundland, and farther north. Very old nautical observations, which I have had occasion to confirm by comparing the longitude given by the chronometer with that which the pilots obtained by their reckoning, are, however, contrary to these theoretical ideas. In both hemispheres, the polar currents, when they are perceived, decline a little to the east; and it would seem that the cause of this phenomenon should ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... afraid," answered Gus Plum, solemnly. "By the chronometer I have still seven minutes before the boat and pail sink out of sight forever. However, the pail was there, sitting, like a hen, on the larboard mast, filled with gooseberries, which Pocahontas had picked at dawn, in company with General Grant and King Henry the ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... in most of the others, there is Bohemian glass in great profusion, and a "one year chronometer" of great precision. A really beautiful inlaid ivory table is disfigured by a menagerie of coloured miniature leaden cats, lions, lizards, dogs, a children's kaleidoscope, and some badly-stuffed birds, singing automatically. On another table were more glass vases and ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... apparatus behind a screen at the end of his office. Close to the wall at the left was a stereopticon which, as nearly as I could make out, shot a beam of light through a tube to a galvanometer about three feet distant. In front of this beam whirled a five-spindled wheel governed by a chronometer which was so accurate, he said, that it erred ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... the asteroid when we were due to pass Mars. So our first anniversary was spent in checking our movements with a telescope, a camera and a chronometer. We discovered our mass—or that of Asteroid 57GM—had depreciated another 25 per cent. It now had only half the mass it was supposed to have. This was too much of an error for ...
— The Minus Woman • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... well-filled sledge, and the sixteen dogs left alive from the ice-packing which buried my comrades. This was on the evening of the 13th April. I had saved from the wreck of our things most of the whey-powder, pemmican, &c., as well as the theodolite, compass, chronometer, train-oil lamp for cooking, and other implements: I was therefore in no doubt as to my course, and I had provisions for ninety days. But ten days from the start my supply of dog-food failed, and I had to begin to slaughter my ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... between any spot on the earth's surface and that of the port from which the ship sailed, or from some fixed place where the clock could be timed. The English government, seeing the importance of this, proposed the very large reward of L10,000 for the invention of a chronometer which would not lose more than a stated number of minutes during a year. This prize was won by John Harrison, and from this time onward a sea-captain with a minimum of astronomical knowledge was enabled to know his longitude within a few minutes. Hadley's sextant and Harrison's chronometer ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... son put aside the curtains at the door for him, and he saw that this was not to be his room. New chintzes took the place of his old leather cushions; a big photograph of Minnie stood on the lid of the chronometer case, and the broken-backed Admiralty guides, ocean directories and the rest were reinforced by a brigade of smartly ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... she turned abruptly and walked—or rather flew, so easy and graceful were her movements—over to a portion of the wall and looked long and earnestly into a peculiar instrument, then returning she said: (without the use of words) "according to my chronometer, more than four thousand two hundred and thirty years have elapsed since ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... worried glance at his wrist chronometer. He had two minutes left, before the cruiser departed. No more time now to search for his men. He hoped the sergeant-major had sense enough to be waiting at some sensible place. He went up the ladder hand over hand and sped down the corridor ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... gloom. It is not always "light" at his evening-time; but this we know, that when the day of immortality breaks, the last vestige of earth's shadows will for ever flee away. To the closing hour of time, Providence may be to him a baffling enigma: but ere the first hour has struck on heaven's chronometer, all will be clear. My soul! "in God's light thou shalt see light;" the Book of His decrees is a sealed book now,—"A great deep" is all the explanation thou canst often give to His judgments; the why ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... and difficult science, but by calculating the distance of the sun above the horizon, sometimes by views of stars, by knowing the speed of the ship, and by having the exact astronomical time at hand, shown on an accurate chronometer, the exact position of a ship at ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... that of the facility or difficulty of reading the faces of chronometers or watches. Sometimes this is done readily, at other times with difficulty. In India in 1868, one observer stated that it was impossible to recognise a person's face three yards off, and lamplight was needed for reading his chronometer. On the other hand in Spain in 1860, it was noted that a thermometer, as well as the finest hand-writing, could be read easily. The foregoing remarks apply to the state of things in the open air. In 1860, it was stated that inside ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... minds are instruments of knowledge, and, if so, in what sense, is so vital that any suggested analysis of mind must be examined in relation to this question. To ignore this question would be like describing a chronometer without regard to its accuracy as a time-keeper, or a thermometer without mentioning the fact that ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... merely the least imperfect time-piece man has devised, makes possible the surest and easiest method by far of ascertaining longitude. Yet the Pilgrim sailed in a day when the chronometer was just coming into general use. So little was it depended upon that the Pilgrim carried only one, and that one, going wrong at the outset, was never used again. A navigator of the present would be aghast if asked to voyage for two years, ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... operations, and it was not even possible to employ it to advantage in observations, as all the chronometers but one and the larger instruments, in order to expose them as little as possible to change of rate or injury, had been forwarded from Metis in the vessel. With the one chronometer and the reflecting repeating circle numerous observations were, however, made for the latitude of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... with compass, chronometer, log and reel, they had kept a fairly accurate record of their course from the time they had set out. Four of the feluccas were equipped with these instruments, and all of the captains had ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... laughing. "I mean as compared to what there is to know. Now, for instance, there are charts in the captain's cabin, and the proper instruments for taking observations— sextants and chronometer. I ought to be able to tell exactly where we are, Carey, and mark it upon a chart, ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... be a bad notion if you dropped alongside just before midday for a morning call, and I'll learn you how to handle a sextant and prick down a reckoning. . . . It'll be sociable, too. . . . Yes, I'll signal the time to you: but, to be ready for it, you might set your watch by my chronometer here. . . . I wonder, now,' he inquired oddly, 'if you've forgot ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... close on the wind. The stranger made a signal to speak us, and, on the Hudson's main-topsail being laid to the mast, he came down under our stern, and ranged up alongside to leeward. He proved to be a ship called the "London Packet," from Charlestown, bound to Havre, and his chronometer having stopped, he wanted to get ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... botanical investigations, without having time to pick them up, when threatened by the approach of lions, men, or hyenas. My excellent watch, owing to the short duration of my movements, was also on these occasions an admirable chronometer. I wanted, besides, a sextant, a few philosophical instruments, and some books. To purchase these things, I made several unwilling journeys to London and Paris, choosing a time when I could be hid by the favouring clouds. As all my ill-gotten gold was exhausted, I carried over from Africa some ivory, ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... there was land stretching along on our weather beam. We immediately took in studding-sails and hauled our wind, running in for the land. This was done to determine our longitude; for by the captain's chronometer we were in 25 W., but by his observations we were much farther; and he had been for some time in doubt whether it was his chronometer or his sextant which was out of order. This land-fall settled the matter, and the former instrument was condemned, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... It is sheer stupidity!—Look here: she cannot even distinguish between th and t. And that, you know, means there is something wrong with the mechanism. When you look at the case, it looks like a chronometer, but the works inside are those of an ordinary cheap watch.—Nothing but the skirts-that's all! Put trousers on her, give her a pair of moustaches of soot under her nose, then take a good, sober look at her, and listen to her in the same manner: you'll find the instrument has another sound ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... sunk, Mr. Snow," he said to the anxious-faced young mate. "If there is anything in navigation, the atoll is surely under the sea, for we've sailed clear over it twice—or the spot where it ought to be. It's either that or the chronometer's gone wrong, or ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... looked at his wrist chronometer. "One hour in the Embassy Club, gentlemen." The two of them clicked again, bowed from ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... been obliged to part with that and many other articles sorely against his will. I therefore offered to give him three common double-barrelled guns in exchange for the rifle. This he declined, as he was quite aware of the difference in quality. He then produced a large silver chronometer that he had received from Speke. "It was DEAD," he said, "and he wished me to repair it." This I declared to be impossible. He then confessed to having explained its construction and the cause of the "ticking" to his people, by the aid ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... about nine o'clock in the morning, I remember, for just then the captain called to me to stand by the chronometer while he took his fore observation. Captain Hackstaff wasn't one of those old skippers who do everything themselves with a pocket watch, and keep the key of the chronometer in their waistcoat pocket, and won't tell the mate ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... true, some nautical instruments, but as they had no chronometer and no almanac, Lord Reginald had been unable to work out his observations correctly, though he had instructed ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... spent three hours and a half over a distance which would be easily covered in two. The march may be about two and a half miles (direct geographical) from Axim, and five along the native path. During the night my companion took a good observation of Castor and Pollux, and with the aid of his chronometer laid down the position of the Apatim village at N. lat. 4 55' and W. long. (G.) 2 14' 2". Consequently the nearest point from Central Axim is 2,200 yards, and 200 from the shore. The north-western angle runs clean across the ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... the Gasthaus zum Hirsch, but I had already sold the ruins of my chronometer, and was twenty-five francs the richer for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... chronometer was again approaching the hour of twenty-two; for nearly twenty-four hours the ship had been on her plodding way. And, lacking the A.D.D.—the Automatic Destination Detector—and other refinements of instrumental installations ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin |
