Ferguson's Lectures on Select Subjects, in Mechanics, Hydrostatics, Hydraulics, Pneumatics, Optics, Geography, Astronomy, and Dialling: A New Edition Corrected and Enlarged with Notes and an Appendix, Adapted to the Present State of the Arts and Sciences

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published, 1814 - Astronomy

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Page 54 - ... 2. When the prop is at one end of the lever, the power at the other, and the weight between them.
Page xix - Beads upon it, at arms' length, between my eye and the stars ; sliding the Beads upon it till they hid such and such Stars from my eye, in order to take their apparent distances from one another ; and then, laying the Thread down on a Paper, I marked the Stars thereon by the Beads, according to their respective positions, having a Candle by me.
Page xxxv - ... my celestial map, in order to find the two opposite points of the ecliptic in which her orbit crosses it, I was altogether at a loss how and where in the ecliptic (in my scheme) to place these intersecting points : this was in the year 1739. At last, I recollected, that when I was with squire Grant, of...
Page xxvi - I saw the spring box, with part of the chain round it ; and asked him what it was that made the box turn round ? He told me that it was turned round by a steel spring within it. Having then never seen any other spring than that of my father's...
Page xxix - ... sometimes on one side of a plain road and sometimes on the* other, crossing the road at small angles, but never going far from either side of it.
Page xlii - Having never had a grammatical education, nor time to study the rules of just composition, I acknowledge that I was afraid to put it to the press ; and for the same cause, I ought to have the same fears still.
Page xxviii - Two large globular stones stood on the top of his gate ; on one of them I painted (with oil colours) a map of the terrestrial globe, and on the other a map of the celestial...
Page xxvi - But happening one day to see a gentleman ride by my father's house, which was close by a public road, I asked him what o'clock it then was : he looked at his watch, and told me. As he did that with so much...
Page 306 - The hour of the day at any place being given, to find what time it then is at any other place. Bring the given place to the brazen meridian, and set the index, to the given hour; then turn the globe, until...
Page 267 - ... and, consequently, it will magnify so much the more ; for the rays are not coloured by reflection from a concave mirror, if it be ground to a true figure, as they are by passing through a convex-glass, let it be ground ever so true.

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