Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 26, 2025
By short snorts of the whistle for dots and long ones for dashes, they soon caught the ear of the operator on the other side. He answered back, "What t'ell is the matter with you fellows?" And Edison and the other operator roared with laughter, so that the engineer thought their think-boxes needed re-babbitting. And that scheme of telegraphy with a steam-whistle was Edison's first invention.
His misshapen body was like a pair of bellows, his head resting between his broad shoulders, moved up and down like a buoy; every breath sounded like a steam-whistle, and could be heard from afar. Heavens, how ugly he looked! He was like a crouching goblin, who could make himself as big as he pleased, and see over all the huts in his search for food.
Duane for the United States Lighthouse Board, reported in 1874, goes to show that the steam-whistle could be heard far enough for practical uses in many positions. Prof. Henry found that he could hear a 6-inch whistle 7¼ miles with a feeble opposing wind. Gen. Duane heard the 10-inch whistle at Cape Elizabeth at his house in Portland, Maine, nine miles distant, whenever it was in operation.
But at length, in 1844, the steam-whistle was introduced, and the "walking-beam boys" were left without occupation. "W'en you git a leetle bit older dan w'at you is, honey," said Uncle Remus to the little boy, "you'll know lots mo' dan you does now." The old man had a pile of white oak splits by his side and these he was weaving into a chair-bottom.
"All right, sir, good-day," said the man, receiving the ticket and shutting the carriage-door gently, with a bow and a smile and another touch of his cap; and, the next moment, with another sharp unearthly shriek of the steam-whistle similar to that which had heralded its entrance into Havant station, the train, giving a joggle and a jerk as it got under way, was speeding along again, across the rattling bridges that spanned the moats of the fortifications and through the Portsea lines, to the terminus beyond at Landport.
I have another incident of the same shadowy and quasi-supernatural kind to relate, which took place in the same street of that town, formerly much affected by ghosts and other supernatural appearances. I say formerly, for what spirit, however perturbed, could revisit the glimpses of the moon in a modern villa, or abide long within the sound of the steam-whistle?
"After relieving the old planter of twenty thousand dollars' worth of humanity, that is, fifty-two slaves, and the leather of his tannery, we reëmbarked. Our boats were sent once and again, however, to the shore for men, who, having heard the steam-whistle, came in greatest haste from distant plantations.
Agriculture was the Saxon's calling, and he made literature a mirror of the life he led. We in this new land are born to new heritages, and the terms of our new life must be used to tell our story. The Herald's College gives precedence to the Patent-Office, and the shepherd's pipe to the steam-whistle.
Holmes has immortalized the same guild of wandering minstrels as a sort of "crusaders sent from infernal clime to dock the ears of melody and break the legs of time." And yet the hand-organ, so often the subject of municipal legislation, is dulcet music compared with the steam-whistle, even when the latter instrument takes its most ambitiously artistic form of the "Calliope."
"Just because its called a steam-whistle, we won't hear its beauty and grandeur, till something else has been invented to take its place, and then we'll look back sentimentally and regret it." "Maybe you will," conceded Marsh. The two elder looked on, idly amused at this give-and-take.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking