hide Matching Documents

The documents where this entity occurs most often are shown below. Click on a document to open it.

Document Max. Freq Min. Freq
Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation 23 23 Browse Search
Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing) 22 22 Browse Search
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight) 11 11 Browse Search
M. W. MacCallum, Shakespeare's Roman Plays and their Background 2 2 Browse Search
Apollodorus, Library and Epitome (ed. Sir James George Frazer) 1 1 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, A book of American explorers 1 1 Browse Search
George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor (ed. George Hillard) 1 1 Browse Search
George Bancroft, History of the Colonization of the United States, Vol. 1, 17th edition. 1 1 Browse Search
View all matching documents...

Browsing named entities in Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight). You can also browse the collection for 1590 AD or search for 1590 AD in all documents.

Your search returned 11 results in 9 document sections:

Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), B. (search)
tached to the stock, has a graduated spring-piece slipping within a vertical slot in the small of the stock, and is adjusted as required. Its spring retains it in place, or it may be clamped by a set-screw or lowered below the line of the hind-sight on the barrel. 2. (Leveling.) The reading of the leveling-staff; taken back to a station which has been passed. Readings on the forward staff are fore-sights. Back-staff. （Optics.) A peculiar sea-quadrant, invented by Captain Davis, 1590. It has a graduated arc of 90° united to a center by two radii, with a second arc of smaller radius, but measuring 6° on the side of it. To the first arc a vane is attached for sight; to the second, one for shade; at the vertex the horizontal vane has a slit in it. The back of the observer is turned towards the sun at the time of observation. (Admiral Smyth.) It is now superseded by instruments of more modern type, such as the reflecting quadrant and sextant. Back-stay. （Shipbuil<
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), F. (search)
a house, in preparation for accidental fire. Apollodorus, the architect of the bridge of Trajan across the Danube, mentions the sipho. Its construction seems to be unknown. Apollodorus recommends a leathern bag of water with hollow canes for discharging-nozzles. The first notice of the modern fire-engine is in the Chronicles of Augsburg, 1518, which speaks of the water-syringe useful at fires. They were mounted on wheels, and worked by levers. Similar devices are referred to by Lucar, 1590; Greatorix, 1656; and Morland, 1670. The fire-engine of Nuremberg described by Caspar Schott, 1657, was of a different character. It was mounted on a sled 4 × 10 feet, and drawn by two horses. It had a cistern 2 × 8 feet and 4 feet deep, in which were two horizontal cylinders. The brakes were worked by twenty-eight men, and the combined streams from the cylinders issued at a one-inch orifice, and reached a hight of 80 feet. An English patent appears of the date of 1632 to Thomas Gran
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), I. (search)
e way to a less direct process, but one more convenient when handling large quantities. Blast-furnaces, operating by the aid of strong blast, to melt the iron and obtain cast-iron, which is carbureted in the process, were in use in the neighborhood of the Rhine about A. D. 1500. A second process in a forge-hearth was used to eliminate the carbon and other impurities, and the result is wrought-iron. The puddling-furnace was invented more than 250 years afterward. In the sixteenth century (1590), we find a notice of a mill for slitting iron into bars for smiths' use by Godfrey Bochs. The change from the use of wood coal to that of mineral coal was only accomplished in England after a great many futile attempts. In the reign of Elizabeth, blast-furnaces were of sufficient size to produce from two to three tons of pig-iron per day by the use of charcoal. In the small works, the iron was made malleable before being withdrawn from the blast-furnace, and in larger works was treate
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), M. (search)
the deviation luminous rays experience when passing through glass under different angles of incidence. Descartes discovered the law that the amount of this refraction is proportional to the sine of the angle of incidence, and from that time date all great discoveries in optics. Glass balls, called burning spheres, were sold in Athens before the Christian era. Their magnifying power was mentioned by the Roman philosopher Seneca, and by Porta of Naples in his Magia Naturalis, published in 1590. Alhazen, A. D. 1100, was the first to correct the popular error as to the nature of vision, showing that the rays came from the object and did not issue from the eye, as had been previously supposed. He determined that the retina is the seat of vision, and that impressions made on it by light are conveyed from it along the optic nerve to the brain; he explained that the formation of the visual images on corresponding portions of the two retinas is the cause of our seeing single when we u
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), P. (search)
an interval for drying, another thickness is laid on. Door and window ways, sleepers, and joists are built in as the work proceeds. Pis′tol. A form of fire-arm adapted for use with one hand. The modern form of pistol is a breechloader, using metallic cartridges. It is said to have been invented at Piston, in Tuscany, by Camillo Vitelli, in the sixteenth century. The German cavalry seems first to have used them, and their use caused the lance to be abandoned. At the battle of Ivry, 1590, it appears that the French gentlemen of the king's army lost ground by the change, finding it difficult to meet the charge of the enemy's lancers without taking open order and—scattering. The general appearance of the pistol is so well known that the weapon hardly needs description here. About 1857, those for the United States cavalry were furnished with a detachable butt-piece fastened to the butt of the pistol by a screw, so that the arm could be fired from the shoulder; the weapon,
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), Q. (search)
a little instrument for ascertaining the latitude. It consists of a little square board, with a string fast to the center, at the other end of which are certain knots. The upper edge of the board is held by one hand, so as to touch the north star, and the lower edge the horizon. Then the string is brought with the other hand to touch the tip of the nose, and the knot which comes in contact with the nose tells the latitude. A quadrant was constructed by Copernicus at Thorn in 1510. In 1590, Davis dispensed with the plumb and adapted the quadrant for use at sea. Previous to this the astrolabe and mariner's cross had been universally employed by seamen for determining the latitude; the longitude was derived from dead reckoning or guess-work. The telescope was adapted to the astronomical telescope by Picard. All these old forms were superseded for nautical purposes by the reflecting quadrant, invented by Sir Isaac Newton, 1670. He communicated the invention to Dr. Halle
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), S. (search)
l used to cut straps of any given width from the hide. Driving lines, reins, and all the various straps which go to form harness are thus cut from the sides of leather. The stem of the gage is marked in inches and eighths, and the set-screw holds it at the desired adjustment. Slit′ting-ma-chine′. 1. (Metal-working.) A machine for cutting plate-metal into strips for nail-rods or other purposes. Fig. 5196. An apparatus of this kind is said to have been introduced by Godfrey Bochs, 1590. It is related that a man named Foley, a fiddler, living near Stourbridge, first introduced slitting machinery into England from Sweden, where its employment gave great advantages to the Swedish nail-makers over their English brethren. He visited Sweden, and fiddled his way into the iron-works, where he managed to pick up a knowledge of the methods employed. Returning to England, he, with associates, erected a slittingmill, but when everything was completed the machinery would not work.
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), T. (search)
ian, interested himself in determining the question of inventorship, and decided in favor of Jansen and Lippersheim, spectacle-makers of Middelburg, Holland, about 1590. Galilco, hearing of the principle of the new wonder, constructed one in 1509, magnifying four times, a second magnifying seven times, and then one magnifying thither with his father, Hans Jansen, invented the compound microscope having a concave lens for its eyeglass, toward the end of the sixteenth century (probably about 1590), but discovered the telescope only in 1610. When the news of the recent Dutch invention reached Venice, Galileo was accidentally present; he at once divined whs of San Salvador. He describes it as a funnel of palm-leaf with a filling of tobacco leaves. The pipe is shown in the engravings to Be Bry, Historia Braziliana, 1590. b. Cortez found smoking the pipe to be an established custom in Mexico. Bernal Diaz relates that Montezuma had his pipe brought in great state by the ladies o
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), W. (search)
hich were used under the name of Milan points. These fringes or laces were sewed in rows to plain caps, which were made of thin sheep-skin, and this head-dress was the French peruque, the German parucke, the English periwig; whence the term wig. One form consisted of three-thread tresses which were sewed to ribbons; these were then stretched out and sewed together on blocks cut into the shape of the head. Frizzing the wigs was introduced by one Ervais. Periwigs first worn in England about 1590. Judges wore full-bottomed wigs 1674. I bought two periwigs, one whereof cost me £ 3 and the other 40 s. — Pepys, 1663. The peruke was an Italian device, first worn at the French court, 1620; introduced into England, 1660. Louis XIV., to hide his shoulders, which were not matches, introduced the long wig, and then no gentleman of quality at court could wear his own hair. Wig′an. An open, canvas-like fabric, used as a stiffening in the lower ends of the legs of pantaloons, and