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Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), F. (search)
freighted with combustibles and explosives, and turned adrift so as to float among the vessels of the enemy, against a bridge or other object which may be burned by the fire or destroyed by the resulting explosion. Fire-ships were used at the siege of insular Tyre. By the Rhodians against the Syrians, 150 B. C. In the action near Carthage, when the fleet of Basilicus was destroyed by Genseric. In the naval warfare of the Knights of Malta and the Turks. At the siege of Antwerp, 1585. By Sir Francis Drake against the Spanish Armada, 1588. By the Greeks against the Turks, 1826. The Chinese against the English in the villainous opium-war. In 1760 they formed a regular portion of the British navy. As a distinct class of vessels, they are now discontinued. They are particularly serviceable in defence and in attacking ships at anchor, and besides the skillful but ineffectual use of them by the Chinese, the instance may be mentioned of the fire-rafts which were la
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), H. (search)
besides those of straw and similar material, are made of fur, principally that of the Russian hare or coney, mixed with a small proportion of wool or cotton. There is a legend that the process of felting was accidentally discovered by St. Clement, who, having put some rabbits' fur in his shoes to protect his feet during a long journey, found at its conclusion that the fur had become compacted into a homogeneous mass. The use of the fur of the beaver, which certainly dates back prior to 1585, threatens now to become obsolete, it being superseded to so great an extent by the imitation made by covering a body with silk plush. In any process of making felt or fur body hats, the first operation is weighing out a sufficient quantity of the material to make a single hat-body. In the hand process, the fur is bowed by being placed in a heap over a table above which is suspended the bow, much resembling a fiddle-bow, though having but one string which is vibrated by the workman stri
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), T. (search)
nts after little fish, touching them and causing them all to become torpid and motionless. Archestrus says in his Demetrius, — Then I took a torpedo, calculating If my wife touched it with her tender fingers That they would get no hurt. For an account of the Gymnotus, see Humboldt's Cosmos. In the early instances, floating mines were used in breaking booms, bridges, or other obstructions to navigation, as well as in breaking a cordon of ships or destroying a fleet in port. In 1585 four floating mines were sent from Antwerp by Zambelli, against a bridge across the Scheldt, erected by the Duke of Parma. Each flat-boat of about eighty tons' burden was stowed with 7,000 pounds of powder confined by mason-work and heavy stones. The mines were to be exploded by a matchrope and by clock-work. One was successful, and made a breach of 200 feet in the bridge, doing immense damage in the vicinity September 30, 1628, the English employed floating tin caissons of powder again
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), U. (search)
stence of the variation (which, for example, is noted in the map of Andrea Bianco, in 1436), but the remark which he made on the 13th of September, 1492, that 2 1/2° east of the island of Corvo the magnetic variation changes, passing from N. E. to N. W. — Humboldt. The first variation-compass was constructed before 1525, by an ingenious apothecary of Seville, Felipe Guillen. So earnest were the endeavors to learn more exactly the direction of the curves of magnetic declination, that in 1585 Juan Jayme sailed with Francisco Gali from Manila to Acapulco for the sole purpose of trying in the Pacific a declination-instrument which he had invented. The cosmographer Alonso de Santa Cruz, one of the instructors of Charles V., undertook the drawing up of the first general Variation chart, although indeed from very imperfect observations, as early as 1530, or a century and a half before Halley. The movement of the magnetic lines, the first recognition of which is usually ascribe