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Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing), Commerce of the United States. (search)
e interests of commerce may take further advantage of currents of air and water which move ever westward as the earth revolves ever towards the east; other ship canals will connect our Great Lakes with the ocean, and steamships from Europe and the Mediterrane countries and the Orient will land their merchandise at the docks of Chicago and Duluth, and the other great commercial cities of our inland seas; a great railway system will stretch from South America to Bering Straits, thence down the eastern coast of Siberia, through China, Siam, Burmah, across India, Persia, Arabia, past the pyramids of Egypt to the westernmost point of Africa, where only 1,600 miles of ocean will intervene to prevent the complete encircling of the earth with a belt of steel, whose branches will penetrate to every habitable part of every continent, and place men in all climes and all nations and all continents in constant communication with each other and facilitate the interchange of commodities between them.
Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing), Engineering. (search)
The American system gives the greatest possible rapidity of erection of the bridge on its piers. A span of 518 feet, weighing 1,000 tons, was erected at Cairo on the Mississippi in six days. The parts were not assembled until they were put upon the false works. European engineers have sometimes ordered a bridge to be riveted together complete in the maker's yard, and then taken apart. The adoption of American work in such bridges as the Atbara in South Africa, the Gokteik viaduct in Burmah, 320 feet high, and others, was due to low cost, quick delivery and erection, as well as excellence of material and construction. Foundations, etc. Bridges must have foundations for their piers. Up to the middle of the nineteenth century engineers knew no better way of making them than by laying bare the bed of the river by a pumped-out cofferdam, or by driving piles into the sand, as Julius Caesar did. About the middle of the century, M. Triger, a French engineer, conceived the first
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), B. (search)
n a sort of Runic rhyme. The Chinese have likewise produced bells of colossal size, one of which, at Pekin, weighs 130,000 pounds; but the tone of their bells is said to be discordant and panny, like that of their gongs. The great bell of Burmah, at a temple in the environs of Amarapoora, is slung on a triple beam cased and hooped with metal, and resting on piers of brickwork. In the upper part are visible the chains of iron around which the metal of that portion was run, to strengthen in the world are stated to be as follows: — Weight.Diameter.Thickness. Pounds.Ft. In.Inches. Moscow (Kremlin), Cast in 155336,000 Cast in 1654288,000 Fell in 1703. Recast in 1733432,00021.23 Broken in 1737. Moscow (St. Ivan's)127,830 Burmah (Amarapoora)260,000 Pekin130,000 Novogorod62,000 Vienna (1711）40,2009.8 Olmutz40,000 Rouen40,000 Sens34,0008.6 Erfurth30,800 Westminster ( Big Ben, 1858）30,324 London (Houses of Parliament)30,000 Paris (Notre Dame, 1680）28,6728.67 1/2
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), M. (search)
indication of a land across the Baltic. It should also be mentioned here that this map of Eratosthenes was merely a plane exemplification, and that he was fully aware of the spherical form of the earth. Aristotle had said, 100 years before, that it was possible that Spain and India were only separated by the sea. Eratosthenes said that only the extent of the Atlantic Ocean prevented sailing from Spain to India along the same parallel. In the map of Ptolemy, the land grows toward sunrise, Burmah with the peninsula of Malacca comes into view, with some traces of an eastern archipelago, and a country beyond India of unknown and undefined extent; so much land in this direction, indeed, that the sea is suppressed. Taprobane is still there, but the old geographer who put upon his map the interior lakes of Africa where Livingstone found them to be, would not take the sea for granted on the southern confines of Africa more than he would on the eastern regions of Asia. Africa assumes larg
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), P. (search)
ds, bronzed and varnished, have been made by the ton in Birmingham, England, and exported thence to heathen lands. Praying-machines are in vogue in all the lands which acknowledge Thibet as their religious center. This includes India, Ceylon, Burmah, Siam, China, and Japan. Divided as it is from the mainland of the continent, and superior to China as Japan appears to be, there is much affinity between their forms of civilization and government, and in many details of their manners and relignese, — from the Imperial press at Pekin, in 800 large volumes. The name of this founder of Buddhism was Arddha Chiddi. He was born about 1700 B. C., at Capila, near Nepaul. This religion now embraces Ceylon, Tartary, Thibet, China, Japan, and Burmah. He changed his name to Gotama, one who kills the senses, in allusion to the sublimation of the soul by physical mortifications. It appears that the Venetians introduced blockprinting into Europe, and wood-engraving and printing had long been
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), R. (search)
tributable to the abruptness of the mountains which face the Bay of Bengal, from which they are separated by 200 miles of Jheels and Sunderbunds. This fall is very local: at Silhet, not thirty miles farther south, it is under 100 inches; at Gowahatty, north of the Khasia, in Assam, it is about 80; and even on the hills twenty miles inland from Churra itself, the fall is reduced to 200. During the rainy season, from April to November, as much as 10 or 12 inches of rain falls in a day in Burmah and Siam. The enormous rainfall of Khasia would, however, seem to be equaled in Cayenne, where Admiral Roussin reports 12 feet 6 96 inches having fallen between the 1st and 24th of February, 1820. At Cumana, in Venezuela, on the same coast, the annual amount is but 8 inches. Latitude exerts a great effect on rainfall, the amount of vapor suspended in the atmosphere decreasing rapidly as we approach the poles, though, owing to its being discharged more equally throughout the year, the
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), T. (search)
e surface, and at a determinate distance on each side of the rows, to permit the tree to be readily removed from the soil Tree-digger. Tree-ir′ons. （Vehicle.) The irons connecting single to double trees, or the latter to the tongue of the vehicle. Also the hooks or clips by which the traces are attached. Tree′nail. （Shipbuilding.) A cylindrical pin of hard wood used for securing planking to the frames, or parts to each other. Teak (Tectona grandis), a tree of India and Burmah, is much esteemed for this purpose, as it shrinks little and has no acrid juices to rust bolts. Oak is also much used. Treenails are from 1 to 1 3/4 inches in diameter. Compressed treenails are made by driving the steamed treenail through a tapering steel tube, so as to reduce them to 2/3 of their original diameter. The original words mean wooden nail. (Old English, treen, wooden.) They are tightened by wedges driven into each extremity. Tree-pro-tector. A device put arou
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), U. (search)
had single umbrellas. Common people stood in the sun. The Siamese monks (Talapoins) had palm-leaves rut and folded, so that the stem formed a handle. Tavernier describes the umbrellas on each side of the throne of the Great Mogul, and those at the court of the king of Ava, whose title was, and perhaps is, King of the White Elephant and Lord of the Twenty-four Umbrellas. The Mahratta prince, at Poonah and Sattara, was known as Lord of the umbrella. The same regard is paid to its use in Burmah, Assam, Yemen, Constantinople, Morocco. As appears by the Female Tattler of December 12, 1709, the umbrella was only designed as a protection between the door and the carriage. Jonas Hanway, who died in 1786, has the credit of contemning public opinion, and defying the coachmen and sedan-chair men, who deemed it their monopoly to protect from rain. It was made, in those days, of oiled silk, upon a heavy frame. The substitution of silk and gingham, and a light, elastic frame, have con
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), W. (search)
boo is uppermost, and while the extremities of the bamboo are left of their original thickness, the middle part of each is thinned and hollowed out below; by this thinning and the proportioning of the length, the bars are tuned. The instrument is played with two drumsticks, like the familiar little glass dulcimer. Marx's apparatus for reducing wood to paper-pulp. A similar instrument in which slips of iron or steel were substituted for the wooden bars was to be seen at the capital of Burmah, and was said to have been made by King Tharawadee himself, a monarch who, like Louis XVI., cared more for iron work than regal honors. The lower figure shows a Burmese guitar of three strings in a frame shaped like an alligator and receiving its name from thence. It is laid on the ground before the performer. The fang-hiang, or wood-harmonicon of the Chinese, had 16 slabs of an oblong shape suspended in a wooden frame. The slabs were arranged in two tiers one above another, and wer
Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence, third edition, Chapter 16: 1850-1852: Aet. 43-45. (search)
s among monkeys, or else the races among men are nothing more than what are called species among certain monkeys. . . . Listen for a moment to the following facts, and when you read this place a map of the world before you. Upon a narrow strip of land along the Gulf of Guinea, from Cape Palmas to the Gaboon, live two so—called species of chimpanzee; upon the islands of Sumatra and Borneo live three or four orangs; upon the shores of the Gulf of Bengal, including the neighborhood of Calcutta, Burmah, Malacca, Sumatra, Borneo, and Java together, ten or eleven species of gibbons, all of which are the nearest relatives to the human family, some being as large as certain races of men; altogether, fifteen species of anthropoid monkeys playing their part in the animal population of the world upon an area not equaling by any means the surface of Europe. Some of these species are limited to Borneo, others to Sumatra, others to Java alone, others to the peninsula of Malacca; that is to say to
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