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The parabolic antenna mounted on the elbow of Ramos' Archer, swung a tiny bit, holding the beam contact with Paul Hendricks automatically, after it was made. Yet Ramos kept his arm very still, to avoid making the slender beam swing wide. Meanwhile, he was elaborating on his first statement: "... Not like before. No terrestrial ground-to-orbit weight problem to beat, this trip, Paul.

The sides of the boat are two planes parallel with its axis, and perfectly vertical. The surface thus formed is a parabola whose apex is in front, the maximum ordinate behind, and the concavity directed toward the bottom of the water. The stern is a vertical plane intersecting at right angles the two lateral faces and the parabolic curve, which thus terminates in a sharp edge.

'Nous l'avons en dormant, madame, échappé belle; Un monde près de nous a passé tout du long, Est chu tout au travers de notre tourbillon; Et, s'il eût en chemin rencontré notre terre, Elle eût été brisée en morceaux comme verre. 'A comet coursing along its parabolic orbit may come full tilt against our earth. But then, what will happen?

Parabolic elements there no doubt are in the picture; but we have no governing revelation, free from these, by which we can check them, and be sure of how much is form and how much substance.

The reflectors originally employed were casts in plaster of Paris, from a mould formed to the parabolic curve, and lined with facets of mirror-glass. The power of these reflectors, however, was comparatively small, from the reflecting surface being composed of numerous pieces, in each of which only one point coincided with the curve of the parabola.

The great majority of cometary orbits are classed as parabolic; and it is ordinarily inferred that they are visitors from remote space, and will never return. But are they rightly classed as parabolic? Observations on a comet moving in an extremely eccentric ellipse, which are possible only when it is comparatively near perihelion, must fail to distinguish its orbit from a parabola.

"The parabolic reflector over there catches these light vibrations and focuses them on the cell of selenium which you perhaps noticed in the centre of the reflector. You remember doubtless that the element selenium varies its electrical resistance under light? Thus there are reproduced similar variations in the cell to those vibrations here in this transmitter.

From General Warren we have a letter dated January 14, 1775, only a few months before he attested the sincerity of his patriotism, in his own blood, on Bunker Hill. His handwriting has many ungraceful flourishes. All the small d's spout upward in parabolic curves, and descend at a considerable distance.

The parabolic curve, as it is called, is a line partaking of the closeness of the ellipse on the one hand, and the openness of the hyperbola on the other. A parabola is an ellipse passing into a hyperbola; or, in other words, it is a part of an ellipse whose length, compared with its breadth, is too great to be estimated, and is consequently deemed to be endless for all practical purposes.

Going up to a blank wall, he manipulated an almost invisible dial set flush with its surface, swung a heavy door aside, and lifted out the Standish a fearsome weapon. Squat, huge, and heavy, it resembled somewhat an overgrown machine rifle, but one possessing a thick, short telescope, with several opaque condensing lenses and parabolic reflectors.