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Document Max. Freq Min. Freq
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight) 10 0 Browse Search
Lucius R. Paige, History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1877, with a genealogical register 4 0 Browse Search
Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee 2 0 Browse Search
Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 2 2 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Irene E. Jerome., In a fair country 2 0 Browse Search
George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 2, 17th edition. 2 0 Browse Search
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Browsing named entities in Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight). You can also browse the collection for Thales or search for Thales in all documents.

Your search returned 5 results in 4 document sections:

Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), A. (search)
for measuring vertical angles, as the quadrant, sextant, etc., or the vertical limb of the theodolite. One of the first references to means for measuring height is in connection with the most worthy artificial object in the world, then or now. Thales is said, by Plutarch, to have been in Egypt in the reign of Amasis, and to have taught the Egyptians how to measure the height of the pyramid by its shadow. This is interesting from its association of names and places, but is absurd in itself. Thales went to Egypt to learn, not to teach. During the reign of the same king, Egypt was visited by Pythagoras and Anacreon, the friends of Polycrates of Samos; Pythagoras, among other things, learned to abominate beans, the peculiar aversion of the Egyptian priests. Egypt was also visited about this time by Solon (Herodotus, I. 30), who came as a student, and afterwards introduced some of the Egyptian laws into his Athenian code. Al-tincar. （Metallurgy.) A factitious kind of salt use
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), C. (search)
re two-wheeled. This form of carriage is known to have been in use as long ago as 2000 B. C., and its origin is lost in the obscurity of the remote past. The Greek tradition that wheeled vehicles were invented by Erectorius, the fourth king of Athens, about 1400 B. C., is due to the vanity of a nation who considered themselves ne plus ultra, in willful forgetfulness of their great instructor, Egypt, from whose fugitives they received so much. Witness Cecrops and Danaus, and the fact that Thales, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Plato, Solon, Herodotus, and others of their sages, were indebted to the land of the Nile for their eminence in science and arts. It is also quite evident that they improved upon their instructors in both. The natives of China and India used carts from an early date, which cannot now be determined; the modern Indian cart is a good deal like its predecessor. So clumsy are they that the palanquin is likely to maintain its hold for a while yet. The wandering Scyt
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), D. (search)
Ahaz went to Damascus to greet his benefactor, he saw a beautiful altar, and sent working drawings of it to Urijah, the priest in Jerusalem. An altar was completed against his return. In the same spirit of enterprise and taste, and probably from the same trip of observation, he set up the dial which is mentioned in the account of the miraculous cure of his son Hezekiah, thirteen years after Ahaz was gathered to his fathers. This is perhaps the first dial on record, and is 140 years before Thales, and nearly 400 years before Aristotle and Plato, and just a little previous to the lunar eclipses observed at Babylon, as recorded by Ptolemy. Equinoctial dial (Benares). The opinions as to the construction of the dial of Ahaz vary considerably, and the Hebrew word is said, by Colonel White of the Bengal army, to signify a staircase, which much strengthens the inference that it was like the equinoctial dial of the Indian nations and of Mesopotamia, from whence its pattern is assumed
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), M. (search)
his sister Arsinoe might remain perpetually suspended. Both the architect and the king died before the completion of the work. This was probably the original of the popular fable of the suspension of the coffin of Mahomet at Medina between two magnets. The name is derived by the imaginative Greeks from one Magnes, a shepherd on Mt. Ida, whose iron crook being casually laid against a block of magnetic iron became attached thereto, and directed attention to the mysterious attraction. Thales, B. C. 640, discoursed on amber and the magnet, and supposed them to be living because they had a moving force. From Eastern Asia has been handed down the knowledge of the directive force and declination of a freely suspended magnetic bar; from Phoenicia and Egypt the knowledge of chemical preparations (as glass, animal and vegetable coloring substances, and metallic oxides); and from India the general use of position in determining the greater or less value of a few numerical signs. — Hu