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Focal   Listen
adjective
Focal  adj.  Belonging to,or concerning, a focus; as, a focal point.
Focal distance or
Focal length, of a lens or mirror
(Opt.), the distance of the focus from the surface of the lens or mirror, or more exactly, in the case of a lens, from its optical center.
Focal distance of a telescope, the distance of the image of an object from the object glass.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Focal" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the focal and foremost fire, Out of the hospital walls as dire; Smitten of grape-shot and gangrene, (Eighteenth battle and he sixteen!) Specter! such as you seldom see, Little ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... there seemed to be to show for them in the autopsied brains. In certain cases with daily attacks the brains were strictly normal in gross appearances. It was the frankly organic cases with large focal lesions that had the occasional attacks. These frankly organic cases ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... present case the rule for determining the distance of the distinct base, or respective focus from the glass, is this: as the difference between the distance of the object and focus is to the focus or focal length, so the distance of the object from the glass is to the distance of the respective focus or distinct base from the glass. [Molyneux Dioptr., Par. I. Prop. 5.] Let us now suppose the object to be placed at the distance of the focal length, and one half of the ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley

... FOLDING CAMERA, is superior to every other form of Camera, for the Photographic Tourist, from its capability of Elongation or Contraction to any Focal Adjustment, its extreme Portability, and its adaptation for taking either Views ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various

... faults, woe betide you! for desirable as self-knowledge is, it is no kindness to have our faults aggravated a hundred-fold, and concentrated before our minds like the converging rays of the sun, in one focal blaze, nor poured upon our heads like the sweeping torrent, nor eked out like the incessant patterings of a drizzling rain. Thus did not Paul. When he felt it his duty to reprove, he was careful to commend what was praiseworthy, and ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb

... FOLDING CAMERA, is superior to every other form of Camera, for the Photographic Tourist, from its capability of Elongation or Contraction to any Focal Adjustment, its Portability, and its adaptation for taking either Views ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various

... comparison of similar objects, or of any that we may wish to see side by side, easy, there should be a stereographic metre or fixed standard of focal length for the camera lens, to furnish by its multiples or fractions, if necessary, the scale of distances, and the standard of power in the stereoscope-lens. In this way the eye can make the most rapid and exact comparisons. If the "great elm" and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... themselves out fanwise from the past into the future, then must the occurrences of the present exhibit convergence toward some historical burning-point,—some focal centre whereat the potential was warmed into ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... amazing spectacle: earth and hell gloating on the gashed form of the Lord of Glory; men and devils glutting their malice in the agony of the Prince of Life; and all the scattered rays of vengeance which would have consumed our guilty race, converging and beating in focal intensity upon Him of whom the Eternal twice exclaimed, in a voice from heaven, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." After this, what are our emotions? Can we ever be cold or faithless? No, my brethren, it is impossible, unless we forget ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... been, and for some decades of years it will continue to be, the necessary chief focal point of our nation. But, in all respects, it is not the true heart. In its composition and dealings, it is almost as much foreign as American. Located on our eastern border, fronting the most commercial and the richest transatlantic nations, and of easy access to extensive portions ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... adult life with some friends, who, like skies and waters, are coextensive with our idea; who, answering each to a certain affection of the soul, satisfy our desire on that side; whom we lack power to put at such focal distance from us, that we can mend or even analyze them. We cannot choose but love them. When much intercourse with a friend has supplied us with a standard of excellence, and has increased our respect for the resources of God who thus ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... on this portion of the heavens, using a Newtonian reflector of twenty feet focal length, and an aperture of eighteen inches. With this powerful telescope he completely resolved the whitish appearance into stars, which the telescopes he had formerly used had not light enough to do. In the most ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various

... also requisite, because, from their speciousness, they are likely to mislead such as take what they read for granted. MR. S. says that when the stereographs are placed at the same distance from the eyes as the focal length of the lens, that 2-1/4 inches is the best space for the cameras to be apart; and that were this space increased, the result would be as though the pictures were taken from models. To this I reply, that the only correct space for the cameras to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various

... to chemical combustion, but to vital replenishment. No energy is created within the body; it is merely transmitted. The body, in fact, acts as a means of transmission—as a sort of "organic burning glass" which transmits and focuses the sun's rays on one focal point. And just as any crack, or blur, or clouding, or other accident to the burning glass would interfere with its power and capacity from transmitting the rays, so, any accident or disease or pathological state ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... The FOCAL BODY then rose to address the meeting. He remarked that the subject on which they were assembled was one of great importance to the routes and revolutions of the heavenly bodies. For himself, though a ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... Mr Peacock a paper on the alteration of the focal length of a telescope as directed with or against the Earth's orbital motion (on the theory of emissions) which was written out for reading to the Cambridge Philosophical Society on Feb. 24th and 25th. [This Society I think was then about a year ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... cases of delinquents with more or less marked psychopathic signs in which pathological lying was the focal point. He reports five cases at great length, in all of whom the inclination to fabricate stories, "der Hang zum fabulieren,'' is irresistible and apparently not to be repressed by efforts of the will. Risch's main ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... shift towards Western America, or rather the prairie region. But, just at present, what are the greatest commercial towns of the world? All ports to a man. And the day when it will be otherwise, if ever, seems still far distant. Look at the newest countries. What are their great focal points? Every one of them ports. Melbourne and Sydney; Rio, Buenos Ayres, and Valparaiso; Cape Town, San Francisco, Bombay, Calcutta, Yokohama. Chicago itself, the most vital and the quickest grower among modern towns, owes half its importance to the fact that there ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... real view our eyes are directed successively at every object, which we then see clearly and with distinct outlines, everything else—nearer and farther—being indistinct; but being able to change the focal angle of our two eyes and their angle of direction with great rapidity, we are enabled to glance rapidly at each object in succession and thus obtain a general and detailed view of the whole. A house, a tree, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... and the Dolomite road the Italians in Cadore had extended like two arms around one of the principal systems of defense. General Dankl hurried reenforcements to the Cadore front to check the thrust up the Cordevole Valley. At the end of this valley was the focal point of the system of railways that carried food and munitions to both the Trentino forces and those in southern Tyrol. If the Italians had succeeded in cutting the railway at this point the enemy would have had great difficulty in maintaining his armies on the Trentino ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... surely required to what we can no more get rid of than we can go out of ourselves. We are creatures of prejudice; we neither can nor ought to eradicate it; we must only regulate, it by reason, which regulation by reason is, indeed, little more than obliging the lesser, the focal and temporary prejudices, to give way to those which are more durable ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... situated, and can demonstrate it anatomically and physiologically. But we have only analogy to lead us to infer the possible or even probable existence of an insensible spot in the thinking-centre. If there is a focal point where consciousness is at its highest development, it would not be strange if near by there should prove to be an anaesthetic district or limited space where no report from the senses was intelligently interpreted. But all this is ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... external things became more real, and his hold on life tightening, he suffered more acutely in each hour that passed. Night after night he went back to Hadleigh Wood. It was the wood of despair, the focal point of all his pain, and he was drawn to it irresistibly through the ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... focal point: from the east, two people; from the north, two people. If in the efficient self-assurance of Adam Hennessey could be paralleled a variant harmony with the insistent surfaceness of S. Nuwell Eli, ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay

... my third review of the heavens. The first was made with a Newtonian telescope something less than seven feet focal length, a power of 222, and an aperture of four and a half inches. It extended only to stars of the first, second, third, and fourth magnitudes. My second review was made with an instrument much superior to the other, of 85.2 inches focus, 6.2 inches aperture, and power ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden

... are too vast to admit of the supposition that they are to be transformed into planets, in our sense of planets, and the distances of the stars which appear to have been originally ejected from the focal masses are too great to allow us to liken the assemblage that they form to a solar system. Then, too, no nodes such as the hypothesis calls for are visible. Moreover, in most of the spiral nebul the appearances ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... themselves. The horse's body filled the upper part of the picture; the legs, the great hoofs, frozen to stillness in the midst of their trampling, limited it on either side. And beneath lay the man, his foreshortened face at the focal point in the centre, his arms outstretched towards the sides of the picture. Under the arch of the horse's belly, between his legs, the eye looked through into an intense darkness; below, the space was closed in by the figure of the prostrate man. A ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... certain variations of apparent size, and degrees of faintness of color; that our estimate of the object's distance from us is the result partly of a rapid inference from the muscular sensations accompanying the adjustment of the focal distance of the eye to objects unequally remote from us, and partly of a comparison (made with so much rapidity that we are unconscious of making it) between the size and color of the object as they appear at the time, and the size and color ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... still able to identify the very spot on which the telescope stood which was used in this memorable research. It was erected at the house then occupied by Molyneux, on the western extremity of Kew Green. The focal length was 24 feet 3 inches, and the eye-glass was 3 and a half feet above the ground floor. The instrument was first set up on November 26th, 1725. If there had be any appreciable disturbance in the place of Beta Draconis in consequence of the ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... done more than half a century ago by Hertz, when he concentrated electric waves upon a focal point by means of a concave mirror," said Hall, "I saw that the key I wanted lay in an extension of these experiments. At last I found that I could transform the energy of an engine into undulations of the ether, which, when ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss

... a telescope. His telescope, however, seems to have been made on a different construction from that of the Dutch optician. It consisted of a convex and concave glass, distant from each other by the difference of their focal lengths, like a modern opera-glass; while there is reason to believe that the other was made up of two convex lenses, distant by the sum of their focal lengths, the common construction of the astronomical telescope. Galileo's attention naturally was first turned to the moon. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... joined the large group gathered at the head of the music-room, and were slowly working their way from the outer fringe to the focal point. As they waited, now advancing a step, then halting again, Beatrix listened in some scorn to the fugue of praise which rose about her, a fugue composed chiefly of adjectives heaped in confusion about the single, ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray

... waters of family friction and delicate adjustments, this adventurous pair had slid into a haven of peace and mutual understanding. And now behold, fresh portent of trouble arising from the dual strain in Roy—the focal point of their ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... another focal point the interests of the United States ran counter to the covetous desires of European powers. Cuba, the choicest of the provinces of Spain, still remained nominally loyal; but, should the hold of Spain upon ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... moving in the world. To these, if they should inquire for the great distinguishing principle of Coleridge's conversation, we might say that it was the power of vast combination 'in linked sweetness long drawn out.' He gathered into focal concentration the largest body of objects, apparently disconnected, that any man ever yet, by any magic, could assemble, or, having assembled, could manage. His great fault was, that, by not opening sufficient spaces for reply or suggestion, or collateral notice, he not only narrowed ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... very near to the lens; B, which is not so thick, focuses the rays at a greater distance from the lens; and C, which is a very thin lens, focuses the rays at a considerable distance from the lens. The distance of the principal focus from the lens is called the focal length of the lens, and from the diagrams we see that the more convex the lens, the ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... lacks joy, your letter says. Yes; love requires the focal space Of recollection or of hope, E'er it can measure its own scope. Too soon, too soon comes Death to show We love more deeply than we know! The rain, that fell upon the height Too gently to be call'd delight, Within the dark vale reappears As a wild cataract ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... can perfectly well describe the facts in the phenomenal terms which are their favorites. For them the soul is only a succession of fields of consciousness: yet there is found in each field a part, or sub-field, which figures as focal and contains the excitement, and from which, as from a centre, the aim seems to be taken. Talking of this part, we involuntarily apply words of perspective to distinguish it from the rest, words like "here," "this," "now," "mine," or "me"; ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... well-known telescopist Goldschmidt (who commenced astronomical observation at the age of forty-eight, in 1850) added fourteen asteroids to the solar system, not to speak of important discoveries of nebulae and variable stars, by means of a telescope only five feet in focal length, mounted ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... telescope supposes it to select copper and zinc in due proportions, and fuse them into brass; to fashion that brass into inter-entering tubes; to collect and combine the requisite materials for the different kinds of glass needed; to melt them, grind, fashion, and polish them, adjust their densities, focal distances, etc., etc. A man who can believe that brass can do all this might as well believe in ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... analogy here will often amount to conclusive demonstration. It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to add, that all the suggestions attributed to Brewster and Herschel, in the beginning of the article, about "a transfusion of artificial light through the focal object of vision," etc., etc., belong to that species of figurative writing which comes, most properly, under the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... to bring all of one's scattered forces into one focal point makes all the difference between success and failure. The sun might blaze out upon the earth forever without burning a hole in it or setting anything on fire; whereas a very few of these rays concentrated in ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... is worst of all, unconscious or semi-conscious thoughts and feelings or natural impulses, rising, like a breath of wind under some motion of nature, and again dying away, because not made the subject of artificial review and interpretation, are now brought powerfully under the focal light of the consciousness: and whatsoever is once made the subject of consciousness, can never again have the privilege of gay, careless thoughtlessness—the privilege by which the mind, like the lamps of a mail-coach, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... recent meeting of the London and Provincial Photographic Association Mr. J. Traill Taylor, formerly of New York, commenced his lecture by referring to the functions of lenses, and by describing the method by which the necessary curves were computed in order to obtain a definite focal length. The varieties of optical glass were next discussed, and specimens (both in the rough and partly shaped state) were handed round for examination. The defects frequently met with in glass, such as striae and tears, were then treated ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various

... Second-hand Achromatic Portrait Lens by Lerebour, 2-1/4 aperture, 7 inches focal length. ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various

... Leverrier asked me to go into the observatory, which connects with the dwelling. They are building immense additional rooms, and are having a great telescope, twenty-seven feet in focal length, constructed. ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... ended at the battery. In the centre of the guns was a raised platform of wood, and a small shelter house for the observer or officer on duty. There were five guns in pits round this focal point and forming a circle. And on the platform in the centre was a ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... foremost cities in the South in the manufacture of cotton textiles and products. Commercially its situation resembles that of Indianapolis; it is a focal point of the chief trunk lines of railway in the South, and has the principal railway clearing-house. Like New Orleans, it is an educational centre and one of the foremost in the South. Macon, Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio are ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... the plane continued its way westward offshore. Frank again took up the glasses and searched the sky, gradually increasing the focal radius. An exclamation from Frank and a hurried request in the transmitter ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge

... of the world for such a man. This battle, universal in our sad epoch of "all old things passing away" against "all things becoming new," has its summary and animating heart in that of Radicalism against Church; there, as in its flaming core, and point of focal splendor, does the heroic worth that lies in each side of the quarrel most clearly disclose itself; and Sterling was the man, above many, to recognize such worth on both sides. Natural enough, in such a one, that the light of Radicalism having gone out in darkness for him, the opposite splendor ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... Phelan's being was concentrated in his eyes at that moment and it is highly doubtful if he would have heard a fife and drum corps in full blare enter the kitchen. He heard nothing and saw nothing below that upward focal angle. ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie

... being part of A. B is a travelling carriage that holds the lens, and is connected by bellows-work with A. In my apparatus it is pushed out and in, and clamped where desired, but it ought to be moved altogether by pinion and rack-work.[24] The lens I use is a I B Dallmeyer. Its focal length is appropriate to the size of the instrument, and I find great convenience in a lens of wide aperture when making the adjustments, as I then require plenty of light; but, as to the photography, the smaller the aperture the better. ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... universe of matter without and about us. As a plain statement of fact, there is no such thing. But, I ask again, Is the mind within the brain, waiting for vibrations that will give it information concerning the external world? Or does the mind, from some focal point without the brain, look first at these vibrations, and then translate them into terms of things without? Do these vibrations in some way suggest form and color and substance to the waiting mind? Does ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... gone. Awareness drifted in formless inattention until a focal point, a mere nucleus of intellect, captured and held it. The nucleus strengthened, became an impression of identity—not his own identity, nor any that he knew, but that of some Other. From this other presence came insistently the warmth and gentleness ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan

... More lost his head on the scaffold rather than aid his less fastidious sovereign in overturning the spiritual supremacy of the bishops of Rome. We may honour the conscientious scruples of such men; but, enabled, as we now are, to view their errors at a proper focal distance, we are warranted, by their example, in drawing the inference that the highest human authorities are no tests of truth, and that great energies of intellect often serve but to strengthen prejudices, and give mischievous ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... minimize the damage, and assist in the recovery, from terrorist attacks that do occur within the United States; (D) carry out all functions of entities transferred to the Department, including by acting as a focal point regarding natural and manmade crises and emergency planning; (E) ensure that the functions of the agencies and subdivisions within the Department that are not related directly to securing the homeland are not diminished or neglected except by a specific explicit ...
— Homeland Security Act of 2002 - Updated Through October 14, 2008 • Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives

... in the field. Living and working as you have done, you have made enemies. The more enemies an honest gentleman collects the richer he is. You are glad to go—well, don't think this town a mere great gambling place. It is a focal point—all that is bad in war seems to be represented here—spies, cheating contractors, political generals, generals as meek as missionaries. You have seen the worst of it—the worst. But my dear Penhallow, there is one comfort, Richmond is just as foul with thieving ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... You will awake to the perception of God as All-in-all. You will find yourself losing the knowledge and the operation of sin, proportionably as you realize the divine infinitude and believe that He can see nothing outside of His own focal distance. ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy

... Gangrene, threatening all modern things with frightful death. To him that will consider it, here is the stem, with its roots and taproot, with its world-wide upas-boughs and accursed poison-exudations, under which the world lies writhing in atrophy and agony. You touch the focal-centre of all our disease, of our frightful nosology of diseases, when you lay your hand on this. There is no religion; there is no God; man has lost his soul, and vainly seeks antiseptic salt. Vainly: ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... in the year 1800. Under his auspices the reflecting telescope reached its maximum of power and usefulness. His great reflector, built in his own grounds at Birr Castle, Ireland, was finished in 1844. This instrument was the marvel of that epoch. It had a focal distance of fifty-three feet, and an aperture of six feet. With this great telescope its master reached out into the region of the nebulae, and began the real work ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... meeting I went back to ATIC, and the next day Colonel Don Bower and I left for the west coast to talk to some people about how to get better UFO data. We brought back the idea of using an extremely long focal-length camera equipped ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... the weathering, save for the wound on his jaw. He was watching Muller as if the sergeant, rather than his men, was the focal ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... pause when Doctor Duvall was taking a fresh breath; might have cast a side glance upon Ophelia Stubblefield in a new and most becoming hat with ostrich plumage grandly surmounting it. But under the hand which he held reverently cupped over his brow Jeff's eyes were fixed upon a certain focal point,—to wit, the door of the main entrance at the length of the hall from him. It was as though Jeff waited for something or ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... have being. Man's origin and existence being in Him, man is the ultimatum of per- [10] fection, and by no means the medium of imperfection. Immortal man is the eternal idea of Truth, that cannot lapse into a mortal belief or error concerning himself and his origin: he cannot get out of the focal distance of infinity. If God is upright and eternal, man as His like- [15] ness is erect in goodness and perpetual in Life, Truth, and Love. If the great cause is perfect, its effect is per- fect also; and cause and effect in Science are immutable and immortal. ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... accuracy at the mash tun than the malt distiller, as it is there he must not only regulate the strength, but, partially, the flavour and transparency of his malt wine. His object does not end with the malt distiller's, nor, like his, concentre in one focal point, the solution of the whole of the farina of the plant or grain employed, regardless of milkiness or transparency; he must carefully take the heats of his liquor, so as to solve and combine the qualities ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger

... according to the prescript of pure reason, would, in fact, be a church. There would he focal points ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... pattern is giving way to the development of walk lines of practical use, recognizing both traffic requirements and the desirability of location for numerous park benches. What will lend more charm to a park than a beautiful drive bordered with noble trees leading up to some focal point or opening a way to some particular vista that would otherwise ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... Sir. It was merely a large collector of moonlight, which was thrown after collection onto a lunium plate. The resultant emanations were turned into a parallel beam by a parabolic reflector and focused, through a rock crystal lens with an extremely long focal ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... renowned for their power to call forth the fullness of this strange echo. "Joe Tom," as he was named, was always called upon, as the guide of lake excursions, to perform this peculiar duty. Stationing his scow at the focal point, the negro would shout across the water, "Natty Bumppo! Natty Bumppo!—Who's there?" And after a moment the cry would be flung back, as by the spirit of Leather-Stocking, from the heights of the steep woods and rocky faces of the hill. On a still summer evening Joe Tom ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... has presented to the Observatory of Dorpat, a magnificent telescope by Franenhofer, with a focal length of 13 feet, and an aperture of 9 inches; the cost was L1,300. The king of Bavaria followed his example by ordering a still finer instrument for the same purpose; and the king of France, with a liberality still more patriotic, has had executed in his own capital, an achromatic telescope, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various

... form, nor symbol, nor any thing reducible to a sensuous distinctness; and yet who can look into it, and not be conscious of a real though invisible presence? In the eye of a brute, we see only a part of the animal; it gives us little beyond the palpable outward; at most, it is but the focal point of its fierce, or gentle, affectionate, or timorous character,—the character of the species, But in man, neither gentleness nor fierceness can be more than as relative conditions,—the outward moods of his unseen spirit; while ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... Thursday, the 26th of June, 1828, the moon being nearly full, and the evening extremely fine, I was watching the second satellite of Jupiter as it gradually approached to transit the disc of the planet. My instrument was an excellent refractor of 3 3/4 inches aperture, and five feet focal length, with a power of one hundred. The satellite appeared in contact at about half-past ten, and for some minutes remained on the edge of the limb, presenting an appearance not unlike that of the lunar mountains which come into view during the first quarter of the moon, until it ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... Shading. Direction of Shade. Perspectives. The Most Pronounced Lines. Direction of Light. Scale Drawings. Degree, and What it Means. Memorizing Angles. Section Lining. Making Ellipses and Irregular Curves. Focal Points. Isometric and Perspective. The Protractor. Suggestions in Drawing. Holding the Pen. Inks. Tracing Cloth. Detail Paper. How to Proceed. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... To him that will consider it, here is the stem, with its roots and top-root, with its world-wide upas boughs and accursed poison exudations, under which the world lies writhing in atrophy and agony. You touch the focal centre of all our disease, of our frightful nosology of diseases, when you lay your hand on this. There is no religion; there is no God; man has lost his soul, and vainly seeks antiseptic salt. Vainly: in killing Kings, in passing Reform Bills, in French ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... comparatively high in the heavens. Under such circumstances there is almost, if not quite, tropical illumination. Here is a picture of native football at the Allakaket, just north of the Arctic Circle, made late in April with a Graflex, fitted with a lens working at f. 4.5, at the full speed of its focal-plane shutter—one one-thousandth of a second. In five years' use that was the only time when that speed was used, or any speed above one two-hundred-and-fiftieth. Commonly, even in summer, many more exposures are made with it at one fiftieth ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... religion comes down; it does not rise up. It is not the wilderness, nor the low lands, nor the level places, but Mount Carmel, Mount Horeb, Mount Zion, the Mount of the Beatitudes and the Mount of Transfiguration that are focal points of righteousness and faith. And when you look at and reflect upon men—the great men, the men who have moulded the world, who have made the massive contributions to humanity, who have dealt the Titan ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins

... XIV was thus the focal point of French—almost of European—life, the professional and mercantile classes, who constituted the Third Estate, enjoyed comparative security and prosperity and under the king held all of the important offices of actual administration. Because of the judicial offices ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... home-born right to Freedom give, And leave her foe his robber-right,—to live. Live, as the snake does in his noisome fen! Live, as the wolf does in his bone-strewn den! Live, clothed with cursing like a robe of flame, The focal point of million-fingered shame! Live, till the Southron, who, with all his faults, Has manly instincts, in his pride revolts, Dashes from off him, midst the glad world's cheers, The hideous nightmare of his dream of years, And lifts, self-prompted, with his own right hand, The vile encumbrance ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... the shores of the Great Lakes, our army has been fairly free from this dread visitation. The campaigning area of the coast and the railway line of British East Africa that gave our men malaria in plenty during the first two years of war, had not provided many of those focal areas in which this disease is distributed. The Loyal North Lancashires and the 25th Royal Fusiliers had been but little affected. The Usambara Valley along the Tanga-Moschi railway was also fairly free. On the big trek from Kilimanjaro to Morogoro the blackwater cases were almost entirely confined ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... from television might help. You know that by means of the scanning disc, the picture is transformed into mere rapid fluctuations in the brightness of a beam of light. In a parallel manner, the focal plane of the Express Ray moves slowly through the object, progressively, dissolving layers of the thickness of a single atom, which are accurately reproduced at the other focus of the instrument—which ...
— The Cosmic Express • John Stewart Williamson

... anti-aphrodisiacal and Van Sweiten commenting upon that opinion, justly observes that the continual joltings caused by so violent an exercise, added to the compression produced upon the parts of generation by the weight of the body, was by no means unlikely to produce a focal relaxation of those organs to such an extent ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport

... a moment, for three or four tiny ants rushed at each of the larger ones and began as thorough a cleaning as masseurs or Turkish-bath attendants. The three arrivals were at once hustled away to a distant part of the board and there cleaned from end to end. I found that the focal length of my 8-diameter lens was just out of reach of the ants, so I focused carefully on one of the soldiers and watched the entire process. The small ants scrubbed and scraped him with their jaws, licking him and removing ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... that infinitely more is involved than the capture of a French town, or even the destruction of a French Army; it is a question of stamina; it is the climax of the world war, the focal point of the colossal struggle between the Latin and the Teuton, and on the battlefields of Verdun the gods will decide the destinies ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon

... discuss these matters without going into a complete optical discussion. The radii of curvature of the surfaces, beginning with the first, i.e. the external face of the convex lens, are in the ratio of 1, 2, and 3; an allowance of 15 inches focal length per inch of aperture is reasonable (see Optics in Ency. Brit.), and the focal length is the same as the greatest radius of curvature. Thus, for an object glass 2 inches in diameter, the first surface ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... precisely by the mean wave-length. This method is especially used with a so-called objective-grating, which consists of a series of metallic threads, stretched parallel to each other at equal intervals. On account of the diffraction of the light we now get in the focal plane of the objective, with the use of these gratings, not only a fainter image of the star at the place where it would have arisen without grating, but also at both sides of this image secondary ...
— Lectures on Stellar Statistics • Carl Vilhelm Ludvig Charlier

... we have an instance of the simplest form of astral seeing, without the necessity of the "associated object" of psychometry, or the focal point of the ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi

... be only one answer: The race that built the City did so for the same reason that human beings built such megalopolises as New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and London—because it was a focal point for important trade routes. Only such trade routes could support such a city; only such trade routes give reason for the City's ...
— Dead Giveaway • Gordon Randall Garrett

... intended that the pictures taken are to be viewed by an instrument that requires their distance from the eyes to be less than the focal length of the lens used in their formation, what is the result? Why, that they subtend an angle larger than in nature, and are consequently apparently increased in bulk; and the obvious remedy is to increase the angle between the points of generation in the exact ratio as that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various

... from the elevated central point of view where we now stand, and in the focal light in which we now see, that no man can be justified before God upon the ground of personal character; for that character, when subjected to God's exhaustive scrutiny, withers and shrinks away. A man may possibly be just before his neighbor, or his friend, ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... by the direction, and at the expense of the Board of Longitude, for the purpose of exemplifying the principle of repetition when applied to a circle of so small a diameter as six inches, carrying a telescope of seven inches focal length, and one inch aperture; and of practically ascertaining the degree of accuracy which might be retained, whilst the portability of the instrument should be increased, by a reduction in the ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage

... enlargements of from one to twenty-five times, with lenses varying in focal length from three to ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant

... we may conclude that if an individual deviates at all from the path which the laws (or, directrix) indicate, if he does not show true respect to the decrees of the focal government, and preserve the true position between them, directly he is found deviating from his course, he is quickly banished to a less enlightened sphere. In an ellipse there is less likelihood of his straying away from the course which the directrix points out, ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson

... two feet long. The problem then became that of seeing what you were doing, and one of the boys faked up a kind of binocular jeweler's loupe with long focus, so that I could lie back a yard from the screw and focus on it with about ten diameters magnification. The trouble was that the long focal length gave a field of vision about six times the diameter of the screw-head, which meant that every time my heart beat my head moved enough to throw the field of ...
— The Trouble with Telstar • John Berryman

... special lands were also stated in "the greate charter." At each of the four focal points of settlement—James City, Charles City, Henrico, and Kecoughtan, 3,000 acres were to be set aside as the company's land. Half-share tenants were to cultivate the lands and half of the company's profits was to be used to support several of the colonial officials. For the Governor, a ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.

... pump itself. All the measurements were made by a fine cathetometer which was constructed for me by William Grunow; see this Journal, Jan., 1874, p. 23. It was provided with a well-corrected object-glass having a focal length of 200 mm. and as used by me gave a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... connected with the Charleston earthquake, which took place on the 31st of August, 1886, are described in great detail by Captain Clarence E. Dutton, of the U.S. Ordnance Corps.[5] The conclusions arrived at are;—that as regards the depth of the focal point, this is estimated at twelve miles, with a probable error of less than two miles; while, as regards the rate of travel of the earthquake-wave, the estimate is (in one case) about 3.236 miles per second; and in another ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull

... that slightly sing-song cadence which is observed to be common in poets reading their own verses—the following stanzas; holding them at a focal distance of about two feet and a half, with an occasional movement back or forward for better adjustment, the appearance of which has been likened by some impertinent young folks to that of the act ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... pollen-tubes is not difficult, but in most cases requires some practice with dissecting under a one-tenth of an inch focal distance single lens; and just at first this will seem to ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... the chief were the hostility of stronger tribes, the failure of the fuel supply near the village, and the compulsion exercised by the ever lively superstitious fancies of the Indians—the villages were abandoned and new ones formed to constitute new homes, new focal points from which to set out on their annual hunts and to which to return when these were completed. The tribes of the eastern United States had fixed and definitely bounded habitats, and their wanderings were in the nature of temporary excursions to established ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell



Words linked to "Focal" :   focal infection, focal point, focal seizure, focal epilepsy, focus, focal distance, focal length



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