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Curvature   Listen
noun
Curvature  n.  
1.
The act of curving, or the state of being bent or curved; a curving or bending, normal or abnormal, as of a line or surface from a rectilinear direction; a bend; a curve. "The elegant curvature of their fronds."
2.
(Math.) The amount of degree of bending of a mathematical curve, or the tendency at any point to depart from a tangent drawn to the curve at that point.
Aberrancy of curvature (Geom.), the deviation of a curve from a circular form.
Absolute curvature. See under Absolute.
Angle of curvature (Geom.), one that expresses the amount of curvature of a curve.
Chord of curvature. See under Chord.
Circle of curvature. See Osculating circle of a curve, under Circle.
Curvature of the spine (Med.), an abnormal curving of the spine, especially in a lateral direction.
Radius of curvature, the radius of the circle of curvature, or osculatory circle, at any point of a curve.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Curvature" Quotes from Famous Books



... the eyelids and nose. This fold is lightly stretched over the edges of the eyelids, and forms, as it were, a third palpebra of a crescentic shape. The aperture is in consequence rendered somewhat pyriform, the inner curvature being very obtuse, and in some individuals distorted by an angle formed where the fold crosses the border of the lower palpebra. This singularity depends upon the variable form of the orbit during immature age, and is very remarkable ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry

... you won't admit it," said Hadria, "but some day we shall all see that this is the result of human cruelty and ignorance, and that it is no more 'intended' or inherently necessary than that children should be born with curvature of the spine, or rickets. Some day it will be as clear as noon, that heartless 'some day' which can never help you or me, or any of us who live now. It is we, I suppose, who are required to help the 'some day.' Only how, when we ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... we comprehend the mode in which such a crowd of laborers, occupied at the same time on the edge of the comb, could agree to give it the same curvature from one extremity to the other; or how could they arrange together to construct on one face cells so small, while on the other they imparted to them ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... consequently have the habit of daily tearing with their claws and burying them deeply in the body of another animal, to seize and then to tear the flesh, and have been enabled by their repeated efforts to procure for these claws a size and curvature which would greatly interfere in walking or running on stony soil, it has resulted in this case that the animal has been obliged to make other efforts to draw back these too salient and curved claws which would impede it, and hence there has resulted the gradual formation of those special sheaths ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... be as well here to remark, that if such distortion is timely noticed, it is capable of correction, even after evident curvature has taken place. It is to be remedied by using those means that shall invigorate the frame, and promote the child's general health (a daily plunge into the cold bath, or sponging with cold salt water, will be found signally efficacious), and ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.

... before us. The rays of light we receive from these objects cannot have the same focus. How, then, can we account for the evident accommodation of the eye to the varying distances? Various theories have been advanced to explain this adjustment; such as changes in the curvature of the cornea and lens; a movement of the lens, or a general change in the form of the eyeball, by which the axis may be lengthened ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... determining atmospheric absorption, the sun's zenith distance at noon being only 17 deg. 12' at New York. The retardation of the sun's rays in passing through a clear atmosphere obviously depends on the depth penetrated; hence—neglecting the curvature of the atmospheric limit—the retardation will be as the secants of the zenith distances. Accordingly, an observation of the temperature produced by solar radiation at a zenith distance whose secant is twice ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... the comparative insignificance of its head. In the northern skies, indeed, the comet of 1843 showed a very straight tail, and it is usually depicted in that way, whereas the comet of 1668 had a tail showing curvature. But pictures of the comet of 1843, as seen in the southern hemisphere, show it with a curved tail, and also the tail appeared forked toward the end during that part ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various

... but not insistently towards hats. He was to suggest trying on various types of hat and to show by his manner and bearing, but without any coarse flattery, the enhanced impression made by the hats he wished to sell. He had several mirrors, adapted by various subtleties of curvature and tint to different types of face and complexion, and much depended on ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... which had distinguished the engineer's procedure in the course of the work, he had made frequent experiments to ascertain the actual power which would be required to raise the main chains to their proper curvature. A valley lay convenient for the purpose, a little to the west of the bridge on the Anglesea side. Fifty-seven of the intended vertical suspending rods, each nearly ten feet long and an inch square, having been fastened together, a piece of chain was ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... become..." She turns her face towards him. He sees tears trembling on the lower lashes of her grey eyes, but something has come into the features, some irradiation of love—is it the light of the sunset?—which imparts a tender youthfulness to the curvature of cheek, lips and chin. Her face, indeed, might be of any age: it held the undying beauty of a goddess, in whom knowledge has sweetened to tenderness and divinity has dissolved in a need for compassion; and the youthful assurance ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... the open sea finally—a broad, empty expanse, with a mirrorlike surface. The curvature of the planet was even more apparent now; it seemed almost as though the water should be sliding back ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... contests are generally lacking in definiteness. The name of the car and the driver are always given with scrupulous care, but such incidental details as length of ascent, minimum, maximum, and average gradient, maximum curvature, and so on, are generally left to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... rounded at the ends, and frequently notched; their curvature is reversed to that of the primaries; they are arranged, when expanded, somewhat in the shape of a shallow cup, with the hollow of it downwards, holding the air therefore, and aiding in all the pause and buoyancy of flight, but little ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... constantly were lost; Vain proved each effort: mystick skill was crossed; The wind, or rain, or fog, or frost, or snow, Had no effect: still circular 'twould go. The more he tried, the ringlet less inclined To drop the curvature so closely twined. How's this? said Satan, never have I seen Such stubborn stuff wherever I have been; The shades below no demon can produce, That could divine what here would prove of use: 'Twould puzzle hell to break the curling spring, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... Phanerogamic Alliances of Lindley, so that "the conclusion is forced on our minds that the capacity of revolving (If a twining plant, e.g. a hop, is observed before it has begun to ascend a pole, it will be noticed that, owing to the curvature of the stem, the tip is not vertical but hangs over in a roughly horizontal position. If such a shoot is watched it will be found that if, for instance, it points to the north at a given hour, it will be found after a short interval pointing north-east, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... and on the other bounded by the market-place, whilst one end abutted on the yard of a great inn, and turned so sharply up a steep acclivity that accidents happened there every day, and the other terminus wound with an equally awkward curvature round the churchyard of St Stephen's,—this most strait and incommodious avenue of shops was the wealthiest quarter of the Borough. It was a provincial combination of Regent Street and Cheapside. The houses let for double their value; and, as a necessary consequence, goods sold ...
— Miss Philly Firkin, The China-Woman • Mary Russell Mitford

... beside salt lakes on the plains a tendency to regular curvature was the chief feature: the relative situation with respect to the water and the wind was always the same; while in some cases, where grassy flats had once been lakes, crescent-shaped green mounds were still apparent on the north-eastern ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... 1824 and completed in 1831, is as fine an example of a masonry arch structure as can be found (figs. 8 and 9). The design was made by John Rennie the elder, and the acting engineer was his son, Sir John Rennie. The semi-elliptical shape of the arches the variation of span, the slight curvature of the roadway, and the simple yet bold architectural details, combine to make it a singularly beautiful bridge. The centre arch has a span of 152 ft., and rises 29 ft. 6 in above Trinity high-water mark; the arches on each side of the centre have ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... the united action of the other two. To run straight, the axes of all the wheels must obviously be parallel. To run round a curve, the axis of each must, if continued, pass through the center of curvature of the curve. If two wheels have a common axis, the intersection of the two lines forming the axes can only meet in one point. To steer such a combination, therefore, the plane of the third wheel only need be turned. If the axis of no two are common, then the planes of two of the wheels must be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various

... had ever had a grand uncle with curvature of the spine or a cousin with swelled ankles, the two doctors retired to the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath tub for their consultation. I ate an apple, and gazed first at my finger and then across ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... come into contact with the heated glass and the heated liquid, so as to destroy the vitality of any dust germs that may exist in the air. The air itself will re-enter very gradually, and slowly enough to enable any dust to be taken up by the drop of water which the air forces up the curvature of the tube. Ultimately the tube will be dry, but the re-entering of the air will be so slow that the particles of dust will fall upon the sides of the tube. The experiments show that with this kind of vessel, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... intellect, monotony cannot exist: it was one of those emotions I had left behind. One day, however, in the year 2132, a great discovery was made by a man called Zarentzov. It had to do with the curvature of space, quite changing the conceptions that we had all followed since Einstein. I had long ago mastered the last detail of Einstein's theory, as had, in time, the rest of the world. I threw myself immediately into the study of this new, ...
— The Coming of the Ice • G. Peyton Wertenbaker

... glass of water sitting nearby. "Why do things look distorted through the water? Because the light rays are bent. Why are they bent? Because as each wave front moves from air to water, it slows down. The electromagnetic and gravitational fields between those atoms are strong enough to increase the curvature of the space between them. Now, what happens if ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell

... behind, he could do as much for the apparent shape of his head at the rear. If the forehead needed still more change, the line of implantation could be altered by removing hairs with tweezers; and the same painful but possible means must be used to affect the curvature of the eyebrows. By removing hairs from the tops of the ends, and from the bottom of the middle, he would be able to raise the arch of each eyebrow noticeably. This removal, along with the clearing of hair from the forehead, and thinning the eyelashes ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... muscles that the lens is able to become small and thick, or large and thin; that is, to become more or less curved. When we look at near objects, the muscles act in such a way that the lens bulges out, and becomes thick in the middle and of the right curvature to focus the near object upon the screen. When we look at an object several hundred feet away, the muscles change their pull on the lens and flatten it until it is of the proper curvature for the new distance. The adjustment of the muscles is so quick and unconscious that we normally do not ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... Accordingly in defining an accident in the abstract, we do not put the subject as though it were the first part of the definition, viz. the genus; but we give it the second place, which is that of the difference; thus we say that simitas is "a curvature of the nose." But if we take accidents in the concrete, the relation begins in the subject and terminates in the concrete, the relation begins in the subject and terminates at the accident: for "a white thing" is "something that has whiteness." Accordingly ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... greater amount. The wing and tail, for example, besides varying in length, vary in the proportionate length of each feather, and this causes their outline to vary considerably in shape. The bill also varies in length, width, depth, and curvature. The tarsus varies in length, as does each toe separately and independently; and all this not to a minute degree requiring very careful measurement to detect it at all, but to an amount easily seen without any measurement, as it averages one-sixth of the whole length and often ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... tight belts and heavy shoes, are conceded to be pernicious. Formal exercises should never be given to any child without examination and prescription by a physician. Children with heart weakness, enlarged tonsils, adenoid growths, spinal curvature, uneven shoulders, are frequently seen doing exercises for which they are physically unfit, and which but serve to deplete further their already low vitality. Attention might be called to many a class engaged in breathing exercises ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... around fast over the curvature of Earth, was a tiny black worldlet, 998 miles above Earth. It might be an enormous meteor, but Dan felt he was right the first time. For it wasn't falling like a meteor but swinging parallel to Earth's surface ...
— Shipwreck in the Sky • Eando Binder

... "Quaternary man is always man in every acceptation of the word. In every case in which the bones collected have enabled us to judge, he has ever been found to have the hand and foot proper to our species, and that double curvature of the spinal column has been made out, so characteristic that Serres made it the distinctive attribute of his human kingdom. In every case with him, as with us, the skull is more fully developed than the face. In the Neanderthal skull so often quoted as bestial, the cranial capacity ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... morbid horror of lockjaw," he explained. "I never get a jag from a pin but I see myself in the shape of a hoop, semicircular, with my head on one end of a table, my heels on the other, and a doctor standing on my navel trying to reduce the curvature." ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... angle fire," as defined officially, "is fire at elevations greater than 15deg," and "curved fire is fire from howitzers at all angles of elevation not exceeding 15deg." In these cases the curvature of the trajectory becomes considerable, and the formulae employed in direct fire must be modified; the method generally employed is due to Colonel ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... produce a large effect. The simplest combination of straight lines is in parallels, and this is its usual combination in works of Art. The circle also fulfils but imperfectly the demands of the fundamental canon. It is the simplest of all curves, and the standard or measure of curvature,—vastly more simple in its laws than any rectilineal figure, and therefore more beautiful than any simple figure of that kind. There is, however, a sort of monotony in its beauty,—it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... objectionable character are many of the devices which ignorant men connected with the medical profession urge upon the public for the sake of remedying curvature of the spine, restoring the figure, or supporting the abdomen. Not a few of such braces and supporters are seriously dangerous. A good brace, well-fitting, carefully adjusted, suited to the particular case, is often of excellent service; but the majority ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... had chanced in those passages on some other similitude, but I can't alter them now, and my trustful pupils may avoid all confusion of thought by putting gladius for ensis, and translating it by the word 'scymitar,' which is also more accurate in expressing the curvature blade. So we will call the ensatae, instead, 'gladiolae,' translating, 'scymitar-grasses.' And having {164} now got at some clear idea of the distinction between outlaid and inlaid growth in the stem, the reader will find the elementary analysis of forms resulting from outlaid ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... son Icarus. He wrought feathers together, beginning with the smallest and adding larger, so as to form an increasing surface. The larger ones he secured with thread and the smaller with wax, and gave the whole a gentle curvature like the wings of a bird. Icarus, the boy, stood and looked on, sometimes running to gather up the feathers which the wind had blown away, and then handling the wax and working it over with his ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... ship builder was using his simple, effective bow-brace, boring holes for the dowel pins in the planking for his ship, and another was bending the plank to the proper curvature. The bow-brace consisted of a bamboo stalk carrying the bit at one end and a shoulder rest at the other. Pressing the bit to its work with the shoulder, it was driven with the string of a long bow wrapped once around the stalk by drawing the bow ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... and ingenuity as a builder, they may be seen from what follows. He was born at Melassa, but recognizing the natural advantages of Halicarnassus as a fortress, and seeing that it was suitable as a trading centre and that it had a good harbour, he fixed his residence there. The place had a curvature like that of the seats in a theatre. On the lowest tier, along the harbour, was built the forum. About halfway up the curving slope, at the point where the curved cross-aisle is in a theatre, a broad wide street was ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... bony skeleton, lateral curvature of the spine is, in mild manifestation, very frequent, and is too common even in the higher degrees. The chief causes of ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly

... adhesive sandals which later on, in my laboratory, will allow it rapidly to climb a vertical sheet of glass, the elephant-beetle is solidly established on the smooth, steep curvature of the acorn. It is working its drill. Slowly and awkwardly it moves around its implanted weapon, describing a semicircle whose centre is the point of the drill, and then another semicircle in the reverse direction. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... himself, unarmed, rolling down the declivity until he reached the stream. Here a thicket concealed him sufficiently, the bushes extending along the base of the rocks, following the curvature of the rivulet. Once within these bushes, there was little danger of detection. As soon as it was ascertained that the young man was beneath the most eastern of the outer windows of the northern wing, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... knows, there is nothing in print that tells the man on the job about the details of the turbine in plain language, and how to handle these details when they need handling. The operating engineer does not care why the moving buckets are made of a certain curvature, but he does care about the distance between the moving bucket and the stationary one, and he wants to know how to measure that distance, how to alter the clearance, if necessary, to prevent rubbing. He doesn't care anything ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins

... withstand the pull of gravity. The relative weakness of rock masses on a large scale was graphically shown by Chamberlin and Salisbury,[66] in a calculation indicating that a mass of average hard rock a mile thick, domed to the curvature of the earth, can support a layer of only about ten feet of its own material. The structural geologist, through his study of folds, faults, and rock flowage, comes to regard rocks essentially ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... bars of a gridiron, a mature specimen of a type that Ellen had met in her school-days. There had been several girls at John Thompson's, usually bleached and ill-favoured victims of anaemia or spinal curvature, who had seemed to be compelled by something within themselves to spend their whole energies in trying, by extravagances of hair-ribbon and sidecombs and patent leather belts, the collection of actresses' postcards, and the completest ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... curvature of the spine, and consequent bulging out of the ribs that you have just now described, arise either from delicacy of constitution, from the want of proper exercise, from too much learning, or from too little play, or from ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... be bent or curved to single or double curvature and sometimes to a warped surface to fit the form of the ship. There are several methods of bending plates. One method employs a cast iron slab of the required form, which is placed on the piston of a hydraulic press. The armor plate is placed face down on this slab, and on top of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various

... home. This is remarkable for a noble appearance; but its most striking characteristic is its magnificent horns—each of which is four feet in length, sweeping widely outwards in an elegant spiral curvature. The koodoo loves the shade of the forest, and especially delights to dwell on the banks of rivers—taking freely to the ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid

... brilliant silver-grey, very much like the central zone of Jupiter. North of this on the one side stretched the long shadow of the rings, and southward other bands of alternating white and gold and deep purple succeeded each other till they were lost in the curvature of the vast planet. The poles were of course invisible since the Astronef was now too near the surface; but on their approach they had seen unmistakable ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith

... normal in appearance, but many show signs of degeneration. This is common in the insane, but less frequent and pronounced in neurasthenics. An abnormal shape of the head or curvature of the skull, a high, arched palate, peculiarly-shaped ears, unusually large hands and feet, irregular teeth from narrow jaws, a small mouth, unequal length and size of the limbs, a projecting occiput, and poor physical ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... Manning, had first generated the curvature field and overcome gravity, had left his grandson a fortune that approached the five-billion mark. But that had not been all. From his famous ancestor, Manning had inherited a keen, sharp, scientific ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak

... with the family history, a complete record of all important events relating to a student's physical life is taken. She is carefully examined for asymmetry; curvature, incipient or well defined; traces of tuberculosis; weakness of heart and lungs; enlarged glands; skin diseases, or signs of nervous disorders. She is closely questioned as to all bodily functions and a careful record is kept of irregularities. ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman

... cruelly attempts to make her sit upright, and thereby keep the spine in an attitude for which Nature did not intend it, she is thereby doing her best to bring on that disease, so fearfully common in girls' schools, lateral curvature of the spine. But practically the girl will stoop forward. And what happens? The lower ribs are pressed into the body, thereby displacing more or less something inside. The diaphragm in the meantime, which is the very bellows of the lungs, remains loose; the lungs ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... learning that this image can be viewed with a microscope, and magnified; thus came the telescope revealing unheard of suns and galaxies. The first telescopes colored everything looked at, but by a hundred years of mathematical research, the proper curvature of objectives formed of two glasses was discovered, so that now we have perfect instruments. Great results followed; one can now peer into the profound solitudes of space, bringing to view millions of stars, requiring light 5,000 years to traverse their awful distance, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various

... accessories, pleasing or otherwise, and subordinate, sought the stranger's face. She saw brown eyes, not very large, but exceedingly bright, quick, sharp, flying from object to object with flashes of bold inquiry, and quitting them as instantly; a round forehead on brows high-arched; a nose with the curvature of a Roman's; mouth deep-cornered, full-lipped, and somewhat imperfectly mustached and bearded; clear, though sunburned complexion—in brief, a countenance haughty, handsome, refined, imperious, telling in every line of exceptional birth, royal usages, ambition, courage, passion, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... amidst splendour unsurpassed in our land. At the termination of the great hall a massive flight of spiral steps, of Egyptian marble, ascends to the fourth story, forming a balcony at each, where ottomans are placed, and from which a fine view of the curvature presents itself, from whence those who have ascended may descry those ascending. On the second story is a corridor, with moulded juttings and fretwork overhead; these are hung with festoons of jasmines and other delicate flowers, extending its whole length, and lighted by ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... are then cut, heated, and bent into the proper shape for knees, after which their centres are placed at equal distances upon the keel, and firmly tied with cords. The knees are retained in their proper curvature by cords around the ends. After a sufficient number of them have been placed upon the keel, two poles of suitable dimensions are heated, bent around the ends for a gunwale, and firmly lashed to each knee. Smaller willows are then interwoven, so as ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... or two might have been thus occupied, when the trotting of a horse and the sound of wheels announced the near approach of one of those vehicles which have got to be almost national; a dearborn, or a one-horse wagon. As it came out from behind a screen of bushes formed by a curvature in the road, I saw that it contained the Rev. Mr. Warren ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... brisk smoking. And I lie back and ride. I take the reins Only when someone's coming, and the mare Stops when she likes: I tell her when to go. I've spoiled Jemima in more ways than one. She's got so she turns in at every house As if she had some sort of curvature, No matter if I have no errand there. She thinks I'm sociable. I maybe am. It's seldom I get down except for meals, though. Folks entertain me from the kitchen doorstep, All in a family row down to the youngest." "One would suppose they might not be as glad To see you as you are to see them." ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost

... Rheumatism—Palsy, curvature of the Spine, Chronic Diseases, Tic-doloureaux, Paralysis Tubercula of the brain, heart, ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various

... had risen up the chimney, he put on another log. "This is our last extravagance for some time, girls—but we'll celebrate to-night," he cried. "You haven't a little elderberry wine, have you, mother?" he asked. "Riley says that's the stuff for little boys with curvature of the spine—and I'll tell you it put several kinks in mine ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... only the curvature, but even the tapering by straight lines, would be somewhat difficult of execution in the pieced column. Where, indeed, the entire shaft is composed of four or five blocks set one upon another, the diameters may be easily determined at the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... school has grown to its present proportions. It is because I have made a thorough study of anatomy and know how to make human bodies healthy and beautiful. I could tell you a very interesting story of Clan Calla, a little Irish princess who came to me with curvature of the spine to see if I could help her. She was very weak and hardly able to walk; they had to carry her to the studios from the subway. Now she is strong and ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... are cut down, stripped of their bark, and sawn into convenient lengths; the sides are not squared, but left just as they grew. No artificial means are resorted to for any bends; a tree or branch of a tree is found with the requisite natural curvature. There is not in the building, rigging, or fitting-up of a Chinese junk one single thing which is similar to what we see on board a European vessel. Everything is different; the mode of construction; ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... junction with the Pennsylvania Railroad, near Harrison, N. J., to Woodside, Long Island, a distance of 13.66 miles, there is an average of 1.5 curves per mile; the line having a total curvature of 230 degrees. The maximum ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • Charles W. Raymond

... Bryan Dillon and John Lynch. Physically, they presented a contrast to the firm-built and wiry soldiers who had just quitted the dock. Dillon was afflicted with curvature of the spine, the result of an accident in early life, and his companion was far gone in that blighting and fatal disease, consumption. But though they were not men for the toils of campaigning, for the mountain march, and the bivouac, and the thundering ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... his horse as they neared an open bluff where the beetling rocks jutted out like a promontory above the sea of foliage below. They might judge of the long curvature of the conformation of the range just here, for on the opposite height was visible at intervals the road they had traveled, winding in and out among the trees, ascending the mountain in serpentine coils; they beheld the Cove beneath from a new angle, and further yet the barren cherty slope on which, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... I heard footsteps behind me, but when I looked back there was no one in sight. Just the tiny disk of Deimos peering over the sharp peak of the nearest ridge, the black velvet sky outlining the curvature of this ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns

... it will be seen that the horns in the photograph before me are of greater length, but not so massive as the other two. They are also more compressed in their curvature than the others, and so the tip to tip measurement is less. The skull appears to be that of a very old animal; the horns are quite joined at the base, and from the incrustation on the bones I should say it ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... precisely similar in shape and proportions, radiating in a lunetted, curved base triangle from the middle chamber; the curvature of the enclosing globe forming back wall and roof; the translucent slicings the sides; the circle of floor of the inner hall the ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... first patents of Horatio Phillips, whose work lay mainly in the direction of investigation into the curvature of plane surfaces, with a view to obtaining the greatest amount of support. Phillips was one of the first to treat the problem of curvature of planes as a matter for scientific experiment, and, great as has been the development ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... an old astronomy; it speaks of the perfect line of curvature of the earth in spite of mountains and abysses, and I have imagined a man three hundred thousand miles high picking up a ball like the earth and looking at it and holding it in his hand. It would be about like a billiard-ball to him, and he would turn it over in his hand ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... towards the crest, reached the Signal Station, where we indulged in 'shandy-gaff' and bread and cheese. Thence to O'Hara's Tower, the highest point of the rock. It was built by a former Governor, who, forgetful of the laws of terrestrial curvature, thought he might look from the tower into-the port of Cadiz. The tower is riven, and it may be climbed along the edges of the crack. We got to the top of it; thence descended the curious Mediterranean Stair—a zigzag, mostly of steps down a steeply falling slope, amid palmetto brush, aloes, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... whatever direction. The crystal in question consisted of ..., which, as those who manufactured it for me are aware, admits of being cast with a perfection and equality of structure throughout unattainable with ordinary glass, and wrought to a certainty and accuracy of curvature which the most patient and laborious polishing can hardly give to the lenses even of moderate-sized telescopes, whether made of glass or metal, and is singularly impervious to heat. I had so calculated the curvature that several ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... distortion at the surface of a mirror affects the direction of a ray of light three times as much as the same distortion would do at the surface of a lens. And this applies equally both to permanent errors of curvature and to temporary distortions produced by strains and by inequality of temperature. The perfect achromatism of a reflector is, of course, a great advantage, but the chromatic aberration of refractors is now so well corrected that their inferiority in ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss

... about the same width proximally as distally. The curvature of the shaft is approximately alike on both sides. Distally the surface is rounded for articulation with the ...
— A New Order of Fishlike Amphibia From the Pennsylvanian of Kansas • Theodore H. Eaton

... length of the beach, would rise and advance, growing higher and more distinct as it approached, and then it would break over upon the shore in one long line of foam, white and beautiful, and gracefully curved to adapt itself to the curvature of the shore. At the extremities of the beach, points and promontories of ragged rocks extended out into the water, white with the breakers which foamed and struggled around them. From the whole there arose a continued and solemn roar, like the ...
— Rollo's Museum • Jacob Abbott

... 17.46, and the fifteen (for one had died) self-fertilised plants 13.85 inches in height, or as 100 to 79. Mr. Galton considers that a higher ratio would be fairer, namely, 100 to 76. He made a graphical representation of the above measurements, and adds the words "very good" to the curvature thus formed. Both lots of plants produced an abundance of seed-capsules, and, as far as could be judged by the eye, there was no ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin

... apparent. Lord Avebury says that when the driver, walking on the near side, reached the end of each furrow, he found it easier to turn the team by pulling them round than by pushing them, thus accounting for the slight curvature. ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... a hill. A sudden thought came into my mind. I said to myself, "If I ascend this hill I shall see the whole sun, as the greater height will make up for the curvature of the earth." ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu

... look. He knew that he hadn't lost the alien; had known somehow that he wouldn't be able to. Too apparently, their own galaxy, near as it was to the Milky Way, was of the same Space, its continuum forged in the same curvature matrices. ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden

... needed for the support of some one dependent upon her, thus following habits established by generations of virtuous women who cared for feeble folk. I know one such girl living in a disreputable house in Chicago who has adopted a delicate child afflicted with curvature of the spine, whom she boards with respectable people and keeps for many weeks out of each year in an expensive sanitarium that it may receive medical treatment. The mother of the child, an inmate of the house in which the ardent foster-mother herself lives, is quite indifferent to the child's ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams

... on the features of that king of old; gray haired, prematurely gray; the eyebrows unlike in their curvature, giving a quaint expression to the face, a mild and good-tempered face, but somewhat deficient in character, forming the strongest contrast to that tall commanding figure on his right hand, with the stern and manly features, the greatest of the Edwards—a ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... that if sufficient elevation be obtained to overcome the curvature of the earth's surface and to reduce to the minimum the earth's absorption, electric telegraphing or signalling between distant points can be carried on by induction without the use of wires connecting such distant points. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... with regard to Euclid's so-called axiom of parallels, "I will draw two lines through a given point, both of which will be parallel to a given line." The drawing of these lines led to the concept of the curvature of space, and this to the ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... inch thick it was quite impracticable, by any contrivance yet discovered, to measure their thickness, and determine the law according to which the colours varied with the thickness of the film. Newton surmounted this difficulty by laying a double convex lens, the radius of the curvature of each side of which was fifty feet, upon the flat surface of a plano-convex object-glass, and in the way he obtained a plate of air, or of space, varying from the thinnest possible edge at the centre of the object-glass where it touched the plane surface to a considerable ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... sea. "Not far off," he said abstractedly. "Two thousand miles radius—and the earth itself not a solid ball, but a big globular shell two thousand miles thick. I could rig up a level, I suppose; work out an approximation of the curvature." ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... bring into the world several sickly children. The spinal distortion is one of the ordinary consequences of lacing. No one who laces habitually can have a straight or strong back. The muscles being unbalanced become flabby or contracted, unable to support the trunk of the body erect, and a curvature, usually a double curvature, of the spine is the consequence. And if anything were needed to aggravate the spinal curvature, intensify the compression of the internal viscera, and add to the general deformity, it is found in the modern contrivance of stilted gaiters. These are ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... appearance, and the other, if not positively forbidding, at least distant and repulsive. The noble outline of face in Edward Effingham had got to be cold severity in that of John; the aquiline nose of the latter, seeming to possess an eagle-like and hostile curvature,—his compressed lip, sarcastic and cold expression, and the fine classical chin, a feature in which so many of the Saxon race fail, a haughty scorn that caused strangers usually to avoid him. Eve drew with great facility and truth, and she had an ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... pass. Satisfied that the length of the image in the latter case did not arise from any irregularity in his glass, or from any differences in the incidence of light from different parts of the sun's disk, or from any curvature in the direction of the rays, he concluded, after thorough reflection, that light is not homogeneous, but that it consists of rays of diverse refrangibility. The red hue he saw was less refracted than the orange, the orange less refracted than the yellow, and the violet more than any ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... ordinary," I said. "They have just informed me it was planned this way. It wasn't possible to build a round-trip rocket yet. You need a lot of fuel to make course adjustments for the curvature of space, so forth. The radio will send back your reports on the Alpha Centaurian planets. Undoubtedly by all rules of probability they won't support life without a mass of equipment. They suckered me too, Meyverik, I swear. You ...
— Measure for a Loner • James Judson Harmon

... and vivid only in the middle of the field. All about that centre the dead fibres and seeds were magnified and distorted by the curvature of the glass. But we could see enough! One after another all down the sunlit slope these miraculous little brown bodies burst and gaped apart, like seed-pods, like the husks of fruits; opened eager mouths. that drank in the heat and light pouring in a cascade ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... of a train in a track, or the motion of a planet in its orbit. If we know the successive positions of the moving body at successive short intervals of time, the rules of the differential calculus enable us to calculate the speed, the change of speed, the change of direction of motion (i. e. the curvature of the path), and the effective force acting on the body. Conversely, given the force at every point, and the initial position and velocity, the rules of the integral calculus assist us in calculating the position ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... misunderstood, said: "No, I don't mean these, but the ones with which you draw several hairs with one stroke; they must be rather spread out and more divided, otherwise in a long sweep such regularity of curvature and distance could not be preserved." "I use no other than these," says Albrecht, "and to prove it, you may watch me." Then, taking up one of the same brushes, he drew some very long wavy tresses, such as women generally wear, in the most regular order and symmetry. ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... Erebus, for I intended to set up my first electric-power-wave station there—that being high enough, we thought, to permit of a message reaching the plateau of the Polar zone and low enough (allowing for the curvature of the earth) to cover the maximum distance in ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... interesting changes in the hand, which, though not very common, is exceedingly significant when found, is a curious thickening or clubbing of the ends of the fingers, with extreme curvature of the nails, which is associated with certain forms of consumption. So long has it been recognized that it is known as the "Hippocratic finger," on account of the vivid description given of it by the Greek Father of Medicine, Hippocrates. ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... Trowbridge essayed to use the air. He believed that this was possible, and that it would be accomplished at no distant date. He believed, however, that such a system could not be operated over considerable distances because of the curvature of the earth. He endeavored to establish communication through the air by induction. He demonstrated that if one coil of wire be set up and a current sent through it, a similar coil facing it will have like currents induced within ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers

... prepared to understand the use of the marginal spikes, which form so conspicuous a feature in the appearance of the plant (fig. 12, p. 287), and which at first seemed to me in my ignorance useless appendages. From the inward curvature of the lobes as they approach each other, the tips of the marginal spikes first intercross, and ultimately their bases. Until the edges of the lobes come into contact, elongated spaces between the spikes, varying ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... an absolute essential in all cases of imperfect bone structure, such as rachitis, or rickets, constitutional disease of children, osteomalacia, tuberculosis of the bones, deformity of bone structure, such as curvature ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... Castle of Houdan. It is a very interesting relic, and to our eyes appeared of an unusual construction. The corner towers are small and circular; and the intermediate portion of the outer wall is constructed with a swell, or a small curvature outwards. I paced the outside, but have forgotten the measurement. Certainly, it is not more than forty feet square. I tried to gain admittance into the interior, but without success, as the person possessing the key was not to be found. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... the forty-second parallel of latitude. That line, and the country from the Arkansas to the Yellowstone, was explored and developed mainly by private enterprise, and it is by far the most practicable line crossing the continent —the shortest and quickest, of lightest curvature, and lowest grades and summits. It is not, in an engineering point of view, the true line from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but in a commercial point of ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... exceedingly delicate crest-line would spring up from the high point of some buried obstacle and sweep along in the most graceful curve as far as the eye would carry I particularly remember one of them, and I could discover no earthly reason for the curvature in it. ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove

... an incline. Thus does the rustic pipe sometimes rise by degrees, with unequal straws. Then he binds those in the middle with thread, and the lowermost ones with wax; and, thus ranged, with a gentle curvature, he bends them, so as to imitate real {wings of} birds. His son Icarus stands together with him; and, ignorant that he is handling {the source of} danger to himself, with a smiling countenance, he sometimes catches at the feathers which the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... before which arises a smoke that contributes, with the slight haze of the atmosphere, to envelope the tops of the tall trees in a veil of blue vapour, rendering them almost invisible. Between these wigwams and the extreme verge of the thickly wooded banks, which sweeping in bold curvature for an extent of many miles, brings into view the eastern extremity of Turkey Island, situated midway between Amherstburg and Detroit, are to be seen, containing the accumulated Indian dead of many years, tumuli, rudely executed it is true, but picturesquely ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... are of a pyramidal form, with a wide base, and a long contracted top. These cells hang perpendicularly in the hive, the point downwards, from which position the royal worm can be supported in the cell, only when the curvature of the posterior part forms two points of support; and that it cannot obtain this support without resting on the lower part, or towards the extremity. Therefore if it attempted to stretch out and spin towards the wide end of the cell, it could not reach both sides from being too ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber

... It is not easy to use them among bushes without frequent overthrows, nor to rise afterwards without help. Each shoe weighs about two pounds when unclogged with snow. The northern Indian snowshoes differ a little from those of the southern Indians, having a greater curvature on the outside of each shoe, one advantage of which is that when the foot rises the over-balanced side descends and throws off the snow. All the superiority of European art has been unable to improve the native contrivance ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... in one view are used to mark those in other views, and to find their shapes or curvature as they will appear in other views. Thus, in Figure 225a we have a spiral, wound around a cylinder whose end is cut off at an angle. The pitch of the spiral is the distance A B, and we may delineate the curve ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose

... craters on the outer slope of the E. border. Of these, one is very conspicuous under a low evening sun, by reason of its brilliant walls and interior. In the region between Gauss and Berosus is a number of narrow steep ridges which follow the curvature of the E. wall. ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger

... moss, or rags, were neither more or less than a vast assemblage of bats suspended, and asleep! They were hanging in all possible positions; some with their heads down, some by the claws upon either wing, and some by both, while a great many had merely hooked over the branch the little horny curvature of their tails. Some hung down along the trunk, suspended by a crack in the bark, while others were far out upon ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... how far the development of Ligia is repeated in the other Isopoda, I can only give an unsatisfactory answer. The curvature of the embryo upwards instead of downwards was met with by me as well as by Rathke in Idothea, and likewise in Cassidina, Philoscia, Tanais, and the Bopyridae,—indeed, I failed to find it in none of the Isopoda examined for this purpose. In Cassidina also the first larval skin without appendages ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller

... the character of park scenery. A wide, deep, even valley, commenced at the southern end of the lake, or nearly opposite to the stand of our travellers, and stretched away south, until concealed by a curvature in the ranges of the mountains. Like all the mountain-tops, this valley was verdant, peopled, wooded in places, though less abundantly than the hills, and teeming with the signs of life. Roads wound through its peaceful retreats, and might be traced working ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... Several times the men ceased paddling, and looked about them at the scene, as new glimpses opened from behind points, enabling them to see farther down the lake, or to get broader views of the wooded mountains. The only changes, however, were in the new forms of the hills, the varying curvature of the bays, and the wider reaches of the valley south; the whole earth apparently being clothed ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... but a few weeks before. The column was halted for a rest, and a number of officers, myself among them, rode out two or three miles to the right to see the extent of the herd. The country was a rolling prairie, and, from the higher ground, the vision was obstructed only by the earth's curvature. As far as the eye could reach to our right, the herd extended. To the left, it extended equally. There was no estimating the number of animals in it; I have no idea that they could all have been corralled in the State of Rhode Island, or Delaware, at one time. If ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... was Jumieges; it occupied a delightful situation in a peninsula, formed by the curvature of the stream, where the convent had existed from the reign of Clovis II. and had, with only a temporary interruption, caused by the invasion of the Normans, maintained, for eleven centuries, an even course of renown; celebrated alike for the beauty of its ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... telescopes, microscopes, etc. is carried on to a great extent in Sheffield. Above five gross per day are ground of convex and concave glasses in one shop. Concave basins cast in iron of the radii of curvature of proposed lenses are fixed in rows on a frame, and rubbed with water and emery. A concentric convex basin is then covered with round pieces of plate glass fixed with pitch; and the convex stir face, with its glass pieces, is then ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various

... by Delpech, and the application of it by Stromeyer, Dieffenbach, Little, and countless successors, it has been used for very many cases for which it is totally inapplicable, e.g. for the division of the muscles of the back in spinal curvature. Still there remain several deformities for the relief of which subcutaneous tenotomy is a most important remedy; chief among these ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... or cambered, wings, and published the results in a book entitled Bird Flight as the Basis of Aviation. In his youth every crow that flew by presented him with a problem to solve in its slowly moving wings. Prolonged study led him to the conclusion that the slight fore-and-aft curvature of the wing was the secret of flying. But he knew too much to suppose that this conclusion solved the problem. A dozen other difficulties, including the difficulty of balance, remained to be mastered. When German societies for ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... particularly alluded to—there was no taking it off and putting it on again with anything like dignity. At any rate, then, here goes a how. But, another difficulty presented itself; my loose frock was so voluminous that I doubted whether any spinal curvature ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... looking over this broad expanse of country before me, one vital thing that made it different from any similar scene I had ever beheld. If you will stop and think a moment, gentlemen, you will realize that in our world here the horizon is caused by a curvature of the earth below the straight line of vision. We are on a convex surface. But as I gazed over this landscape, and even with no appreciable light from the sky I could see a distance of several miles, I saw at once that quite the reverse was true. I seemed to ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... best suit, and by the manner of his taking observations. Besides, there is no opportunity in these parts for him to follow his trade. He is a glass-blower. You may perceive he is a little deaf, and the curvature of his motions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... apparent dip of the visible horizon at different heights from the sea, as calculated from the known curvature of the earth, allowance is made for the refraction of the atmosphere, on a supposition of its being constant, but as it is known to vary, the tabular dip will often be erroneous, and, consequently, altitudes taken under different states of the ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall

... was not broad, but its numerous isles, willowy banks, and verdant meadows, formed a line for the eye to follow. Rouen in the distance, with its ebony towers, fantastic roofs, and straggling suburbs, lines its shores, at a curvature where the stream swept away west again, bearing craft of the sea on its bosom. These dark old towers have a sombre, mysterious air, which harmonizes admirably with the recollections that crowd the mind at such a moment! Scarce an isolated dwelling ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... thing: It recalls the picture in the joggerfy that proved the earth was round because the hull of a ship disappears before the sails, as it would if the ship was going over a hill. You sweep your eye along where the sky and water meet, and it seems you can note the curvature of the earth. Maybe it is that, and maybe it is all in your own eye. I ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... one without exception on the lunar disc, is presented on the interior surface of these amphitheatres, being notably downward from the exterior plane, a contrary form to that which terrestrial craters present. It follows, therefore, that the general curvature at the bottom of these amphitheatres gives us fear of an inferior diameter to that ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... of its fibres, and are, I think, exactly the same as those which would be traced by the currents of a river entering a lake of the shape of the leaf, at the end where the stalk is, and passing out at its point." Curvature was one of the special subjects of Ruskin, the one he found most neglected by ordinary artists. The "Alisma" was a test of observation and draughtsmanship. He had never seen it so thoroughly or so well drawn, and heartily ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... of. A great painter, who flourished many olympiads ago, has, in his volume entitled the Canon, defined the line of beauty. It was here in its perfection: it followed with winning obsequiousness every member, but delighted more especially to swim along that placid and pliant curvature on which Nature had ranged the implements of mastication. Pawing with his cloven hoof, he suddenly changed his countenance from the contemplative to the wrathful. At one effort he rose up to his whole length, breadth, and height: and they who had never ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... could not see that the top of a true billiard-table must, theoretically, be spherical, just like a portion of the orange-peel that George cut out. Of course, the table is so small in proportion to the surface of the earth that the curvature is not appreciable, but it is nevertheless true in theory. A surface that we call level is not the same as our idea of a true ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... made as to straighten out while passing through the bronchoscope and to spring back into their original shape on up from the lower jaw emerging from the distal end of the bronchoscopic tube, the radius of curvature being regulated by the extent of emergence permitted. They are made in extra-light pattern, 40 cm. long, and the regular model 45 cm. long. The full-curved model, giving 180 degrees and reaching up into the ascending branches, is made in both ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... the several breeds, the development of the bones of the face in length and breadth and curvature differs enormously. The shape, as well as the breadth and length of the ramus of the lower jaw, varies in a highly remarkable manner. The number of the caudal and sacral vertebrae vary; as does the number of the ribs, together with their relative breadth and the presence of processes. ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... who will not learn to carve or paint, and think themselves greater men because they cannot, it is wholly wasted time to read any words of mine; in the truest and sternest sense they can read no words of mine; for the most familiar I can use—"form," "proportion," "beauty," "curvature," "colour"—are used in a sense which by no effort I can communicate to such readers; and in no building that I praise, is the thing that I praise ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... dry-goods, flanking the right wall in stacks and bolts, merge into blur, the outline of a white-sateen and corseted woman's torso surmounting the topmost of the shelves with bold curvature. ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... mile opened in the circle around us, without bringing her beautiful proportions within its range. But this could not last for ever, there not being sufficient time to carry so large a vessel over the curvature of the ocean's surface. As usual, Marble saw her first. She had fairly passed to leeward of us, and was quite two leagues distant, driving ahead with the speed of a race-horse. With a clear horizon, an open ocean, a stiff breeze, and hours ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... scene had a tint that strongly reminded me of the character of Germanic mysteriousness. We must have been at a great elevation, though the mountains were not prominent objects; on the contrary, the eye ranged until it found the horizon, as at sea, in the curvature of the earth. The rills near us flowed into the Rhine, and, traversing half Europe, emptied themselves into the North Sea; while the stream that wound its way through the valley below, took a south-easterly direction towards the confines of Asia. One gets grand and pleasing images in ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... (Figure 55.) will show that each of the formations 2, 3, 4 are repeated thrice at the surface, twice with a southerly, and once with a northerly inclination or DIP, and the beds in No. 1, which are nearly horizontal, are still brought up twice by a slight curvature to the surface, once on each side of A. Beginning at the north-west extremity, the tile-stones and conglomerates, No. 4 and No. 3, are vertical, and they generally form a ridge parallel to the southern skirts of the Grampians. The superior strata, Nos. 2 and 1, become less and less ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... advance of anything that had gone before it in Greece, and it is quite different from the columns of Egypt. In the Doric temple of Corinth (650-600 B. C.) the columns have already reached the type form, the tapered shaft with its entasis or slight convex curvature in outline, its massive solidity (the ratio is one of diameter to four and a quarter of height), and the bold parabolic curve of the echinus moulding under the abacus of its cap. In this form, the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... lace tightly, nothing can save you from acquiring high shoulders, abnormally large hips, varicose veins in your legs, and a red nose. Surely such penalties, to say nothing of heart disease, spinal curvature, and worse, are sufficiently dreadful to deter either maids or matrons from unduly compressing their waists? No adult woman's waist ought to measure less in circumference than twenty-four inches at the smallest, and ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various

... in the drama below grew smaller. At the same time the vista widened, so that they saw more and more countryside. It twisted beneath them and the horizon came giddily into view. A few moments later the curvature of the earth could ...
— Double Take • Richard Wilson

... in the Weather-glass, that at the bottom fill'd only 155. spaces, at the top fill'd 158. though the heat at the top and bottom was found exactly the same with a scal'd Thermometer: I think it very rational to suppose, that the greatest Curvature of the Rays is made nearest the Earth, and that the inflection of the Rays, above 3. or 4. miles upwards, is very inconsiderable, and therefore that by this means such calculations of the height of Mountains, as are made from the distance ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... a mile in diameter. It was more than a battle-craft; it also had political functions. The grand salon, on the outer zone where the curvature of the floors was less disconcerting, was as magnificent as any but a few of the rooms of the Imperial Palace at Asgard on Odin, the floor richly carpeted and the walls alternating mirrors and paintings. The movable furniture varied according to occasion; at present, it consisted of the bare ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper

... skeletons of the several breeds, the development of the bones of the face, in length and breadth and curvature, differs enormously. The shape, as well as the breadth and length of the ramus of the lower jaw, varies in a highly remarkable manner. The caudal and sacral vertebrae vary in number; as does the number of the ribs, together with their relative ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... Commencing with the skull, Cuvier has admitted[57] that in form the differences are "plus fortes que celles d'aucunes especes sauvages d'un meme genre naturel." The proportions of the different bones; the curvature of the lower jaw, the position of the condyles with respect to the plane of the teeth (on which F. Cuvier founded his classification), and in mastiffs the shape of its posterior branch; the shape of the zygomatic arch, and of the temporal fossae; ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... Or, in the curvature Of that strange mirror, something that might cure The ache in me—some message, said perchance Of her dead loveliness, which once it glassed, That might repeat again my lost romance In momentary pictures of the past, While in its depths ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein

... the little river in such a manner as to leave a narrow passage along the sands immediately under the declination of the arch. In accordance with the caution of their conductor, the officers had placed themselves under it; and with their backs slightly bent forward to meet the curvature of the bridge, so that no ray of light could pass between their bodies and the fabric itself, now awaited the arrival of the vessel on which their only hope depended. We shall not attempt to describe their feelings on finding themselves, at that lone hour of the night, immediately under a spot ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... appetite either for food or drink, and dry skin, with cold extremities. She has at times been occasionally worse, and been relieved in some degree by the bark. She began to bend forwards, and to lift up her shoulders. The former seemed owing to a beginning curvature of the spine, the latter was probably caused to ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... and tested the curvature of its seemingly horizontal lines by sighting along the unencumbered platform, and having stopped at several points of the grand portico to admire the fine views of the city and surrounding country, the traveler picks his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various



Words linked to "Curvature" :   derivative, configuration, centre of curvature, medicine, waviness, spinal curvature, differential, derived function, straightness, first derivative, circle of curvature, curliness, curve, differential coefficient, center of curvature, form, contour, shape, status, medical specialty, radius of curvature, conformation



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