"Traction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that by the use of copper wiring electric power could be carried great distances. A line twenty-five miles long bore from the American River Falls, at Folsom, California, to Sacramento, a current which the city found ample for traction, light, and power. Niagara Falls was harnessed to colossal generators, whose product was transmitted to neighboring cities and manufactories. Loss en route was at first considerable, but cunning devices ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... saw. He had heard the glowing descriptions of the Board of Directors. He had seen the architect's projections of fine modern buildings resting on water-proof buoys, neat boating channels to the mine sites, fine orange-painted dredge equipment (including the new Piper Axis-Traction Dredges that had been developed especially for the operation). It had sounded, in short, just the way a Piper ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... away from their tasks, shaking laborers out of the brief after-lunch siesta in a patch of shade. "The boss" was hampered by having only two languages where ten were needed. In the early afternoon he went on to Paraiso to feed himself and the traction power, while I held the fort. Soon after rain fell, a sort of advance agent of the rainy season, a sudden tropical downpour that ran in rivulets down across the pink card-boards and my victims. Yet strange to note, the writing of the medium soft pencil remained as clear ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... to Manchester than from New York to Liverpool, yet it was with the utmost difficulty that a grant of the right to build a railway could be obtained from Parliament. There was little faith in such roads, and still less in steam-traction. The land-owners were opposed to its passage through their domains, and obliged Mr. Stephenson to survey by stealth or at the risk of a broken head. So great was this opposition, that the projectors were fain to lay out their road for four miles across a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... his arms above his head, drew in a great gulping mouthful of air, exhaled it, and laughed a deepchested, satisfied laugh, for all he was staggering like a drunken man. Here Michael's wife Katya came puffing out of her house like a traction engine—such was the shape in which nature formed her—and falling on her knees, caught his hand to her vast bosom, weeping like the overflowing of a ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... lower loop. They should be so laid on that three inches extends up the string from this point and the rest lies along the tapered extremity. Wax them tight. Hold the three long strands together while you give them final equalizing traction. Start here and twist your second loop, drawing each strand toward you as you twist it away from you until a rope of three inches is formed again. This you double back on itself, mate its tapered extremities with the three long strands of the string ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... carries a wheel at each end, rigidly attached to it. When rounding a corner the outside wheel has further to travel than the other, and consequently one or both wheels must slip. The curves are made so gentle, however, that the amount of slip is very small. But with a traction-engine, motor car, or tricycle the case is different, for all have to describe circles of very small diameter in proportion to the length of the vehicle. Therefore in every case a compensating gear is fitted, ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... Great State, on the other hand, is still altogether unsubstantial. It is a project as dream-like to-day as electric lighting, electric traction, or aviation would have been in the year 1850. In 1850 a man reasonably conversant with the physical science of his time could have declared with a very considerable confidence that, given a certain measure of persistence and social security, these things were more likely to be attained ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... purpose that these desperate rearguard actions were being undertaken by the retreating Germans. Some of the big guns were drawn by traction engines, and their progress even over good roads must necessarily be very slow. To enable them to be transported to the positions already prepared along the Aisne River, looking to a possible retreat, the victorious French had to be kept ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... the cord, it is necessary to change these dressings twice a day; as this exudation is of a somewhat gluey nature, it will be found that the dressings stick to the cord. In removing the gauze great care must be used not to make any traction on the cord; when the infant is placed in the bath, the water loosens the dressing and it falls off in the water; at other times it must be removed with the greatest care. There should never be any odor about the cord; it usually drops off about the ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... of playing, and without reference to physiological laws; while kindly Nature accomplishes her ends unconsciously, and makes his very indifference beneficial to him. You may have more systematic motions, you may devise means for the more perfect traction of each particular muscle, but you cannot create the joy and gladness of the game, and where these are absent, the charm and the health of the exercise are gone. The case is similar with ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... a hundred yards away, was caught in the traction of her strong enthralment, and, like a planet, started into running round a region of sea which wheeled; while seven of the boats, rowing for life, were grasped, and dragged back, with a hundred and ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... guide the labour. Not only was there a deficiency of men, but often so many of the working bullocks were drafted off to the forests for timber haulage, that it left a sparseness of them for agricultural purposes. The remedy, however, presented itself by the utilisation of the traction engine. The breaking-up of fresh lands has always been ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... when I was beginning to wonder whether our wheels could find traction if the grade grew much steeper, we topped the summit of the pass and looked down on Macedonia. Below us the forested slopes of the mountains ran down, like the folds of a great green rug lying rumpled on an ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... a vault beneath the street, In the trench of the traction rope, That I found a guy with a fishy eye And a think tank filled ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... pipe that is employed for sewer construction is sometimes used for culverts. It must be very carefully bedded, preferably on a concrete cradle and the joints filled with cement mortar. Culverts of this type have a tendency to break under unusual loads, such as traction engines or trucks. They may be damaged by the pressure from freezing water, particularly when successive freezing and thawing results in the culvert filling with mushy snow, which ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... York. These five men did not invariably work as a unit. Yerkes, though he had considerable interest in Philadelphia, which had been the scene of his earliest exploits, limited his activities largely to Chicago. Widener and Elkins, however, not only dominated Philadelphia traction but participated in all of Yerkes's enterprises in Chicago and held an equal interest with Whitney and Ryan in New York. The latter Metropolitan pair, though they confined their interest chiefly to their own city, at times transferred their attention to Chicago. Thus, for nearly thirty years, ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... and he would then take any opportunity that presented for an adventure; for he was not only a soldier, he was a poet also, that is, a man of science, and whatever was strange or unusual had an irresistible at-traction for him. Such a soldier was he that, single-handed, he could take the Fianna out of any hole they got into, but such an inveterate poet was he that all the Fianna together could scarcely retrieve ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... of Electrical Engineers at its last meeting of the season, held June 25, again considered the subject of electrical traction, the paper presented by Mr. Leo Daft being based upon some recent electrical work on the elevated railroads and its bearing on the rapid transit problem. The Railroad Gazette gives ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... description of these flappers, and the use they were of to your friends the Laputans; whose minds (Gulliver says) are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak nor attend to the discourses of others, without being roused by some external traction upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason, those people who are able to afford it, always keep a flapper in their family, as one of their domestics; nor ever walk about, or make visits without him. This flapper is likewise ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... GEORGE]. Dad's the president of your traction company, you know. [GEORGE rises in fright.] Oh, that's all right. I've lost you your job, but I'll get you a better one as I promised. Don't be afraid of Dad—in the parlor. ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... as to the value of dogs as a means of traction in the Polar regions, except when travelling continuously over very rugged country, over heavily crevassed areas, or during unusually bad weather. It is in such special stances that the superiority of man-hauling has been proved. Further, in an enterprise where human life ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... speaking to him until it is absolutely necessary, which will be at the moment he is getting ready to swerve. I have at present a very amiable and steady hunter, which will invariably shy at any high vehicle, but will pass traction engines, trains and even motor cars quite quietly. No doubt his unsteadiness is nervousness and not vice, and is the result of an accident. It is not a good plan to wrestle with a horse until he can be induced to go up to and smell what he was shying ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... hereditary premiers and instituted a cabinet system of government. Reforms in 1990 established a multiparty democracy within the framework of a constitutional monarchy. A Maoist insurgency, launched in 1996, has gained traction and is threatening to bring down the regime, especially after a negotiated cease-fire between the Maoists and government forces broke down in August 2003. In 2001, the crown prince massacred ten members of the royal family, including the king and queen, ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... as you call them, put traction beams on us and started tugging us toward the asteroid. We tried a couple of atomic shots but when they just ...
— Acid Bath • Vaseleos Garson
... road. The railway waggons still continued to be drawn by horses. By improving and flattening the tramway, considerable economy in horse-power had indeed been secured; but unless some more effective method of mechanical traction could be devised, it was clear that railway improvement ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... the Duke with that quiet, democratic carelessness which meant that he didn't care whether half a dozen other members lunching at the club could hear or not. After all, what was a duke to a man who was president of the People's Traction and Suburban Co., and the Republican Soda and Siphon Co-operative, and chief director of the People's District Loan and Savings? If a man with a broad basis of popular support like that was proposing to entertain a duke, surely there could be no doubt ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... came in handy sometimes. The driving motors wouldn't take the full output of the generators, of course; the Converter hardly had to strain itself to drive the automobile at top speed, and, as long as there was traction, no grade could stall the car. Theoretically, it could ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett |
