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Altitude   Listen
noun
Altitude  n.  
1.
Space extended upward; height; the perpendicular elevation of an object above its foundation, above the ground, or above a given level, or of one object above another; as, the altitude of a mountain, or of a bird above the top of a tree.
2.
(Astron.) The elevation of a point, or star, or other celestial object, above the horizon, measured by the arc of a vertical circle intercepted between such point and the horizon. It is either true or apparent; true when measured from the rational or real horizon, apparent when from the sensible or apparent horizon.
3.
(Geom.) The perpendicular distance from the base of a figure to the summit, or to the side parallel to the base; as, the altitude of a triangle, pyramid, parallelogram, frustum, etc.
4.
Height of degree; highest point or degree. "He is (proud) even to the altitude of his virtue."
5.
Height of rank or excellence; superiority.
6.
pl. Elevation of spirits; heroics; haughty airs. (Colloq.) "The man of law began to get into his altitude."
Meridian altitude, an arc of the meridian intercepted between the south point on the horizon and any point on the meridian. See Meridian, 3.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Altitude" Quotes from Famous Books



... represent the direction and quantity of those forces; we may by combining these truths with propositions relating to the properties of straight lines and of parallelograms (as that a triangle is half a parallelogram of the same base and altitude), deduce another important uniformity of succession, viz., that a body moving round a centre of force describes areas proportional to the times. But unless there had been laws of succession in our premises, there could have been no truths of succession in our conclusions. A similar remark ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... entertain, and you know it," Dolly laughed. "Come down from that lofty altitude and I'll give ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... past gained a pleasant peep of open fields, belts of wood and farm houses, with now and then a glimpse of a great house amidst its trees. In the distance one or two bare solitary hills, imposing in aspect only from their desolation, for their form gave no effect to their altitude, rose to the height of over a ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... reason for relinquishing the plan probably was that the Egyptians believed the Red Sea to have been higher in altitude than the Nile. They feared that if the canal were opened between the Nile and the Red Sea the salt water would flow in and make the waters of the Nile brackish. This explanation would indicate a lack of knowledge of locks and sluices on the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... is tottering in proportion to its great altitude and narrow base. Now, the child has this latter, and learns to walk but slowly, because of the difficulty, perhaps in ten or twelve months, while the young of quadrupeds, having a broad supporting base, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various

... fillette, who lived next door to the school, overset my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the spheres of my studies. I, however, struggled on with my sines and cosines for a few days more; but stepping into the garden one charming noon, to take the sun's altitude, there I ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... mountain region of the Benguet district, at an altitude of about 5,000 feet, the Insular Government has established a health-resort for the recreation of the members of the Civil Commission. The air is pure, and the temperature so low (max. 78 deg., min. 46 deg. Fahr.) that pine-forests exist in the neighbourhood, and potatoes (which ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... topography of whole mountain slopes has been remodelled by the hand of prehistoric man. No place was too inaccessible, and terrace and temple crown the Andine summits in Peru at more than 16,000 feet elevation above sea-level, and in Mexico in similar or greater profusion, but at less altitude. ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... more decayed and dilapidated by daylight than they had upon the preceding night. She went to the windows, but they afforded no more cheering prospect—looking out upon a dark courtyard, round which the vast hotel rose in sombre altitude—dreary, inauspicious, and colossal. The court was utterly deserted, and the gate leading from it into the fore-court was closed and barred. The Bastile itself would have been cheerful compared with this ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... glorious Now, was his and hers, they were together on the hill where Hope stands smiling, and if, somewhere below that dizzy altitude, there was a valley where Memory lurked, she could not see it for the rainbow clouds of ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... to their tent, where they unfolded their camp cots and set them up. There was not much bed-making. The body of the cot was of canvas, and required no mattress. From out of their baggage each took a small pillow and pair of blankets. At this altitude the night was already rather chilly, despite the fact that ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock

... rapidly during the recent war that the necessity for powerful search-lights was greatly augmented and as the conflict progressed the enemy airmen came to look upon the newly developed ones with considerable concern. The rapidly moving aircraft and its high altitude brought new factors into the design of these lights. It now became necessary to have the most intense beam and to be able to sweep the heavens with it by means of delicate controlling apparatus, for the targets were sometimes minute specks moving ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... off the ridge into a valley and then up to higher altitude, where the character of the forest changed. The trees were no longer pines, but firs and spruce, growing thin and exceedingly tall, with few branches below the topmost foliage. So dense was this forest that twilight seemed to ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... Gate of the Temple was covered all over with gold. It had also golden vines above it, from which hung clusters of grapes as tall as a man's height.... It had golden doors of 55 cubits altitude, and 16 in breadth: but before these doors there was a veil of equal largeness with the doors. It was a Babylonian curtain of blue, fine linen, and scarlet and purple; of an admixture that was truly wonderful. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... judicial firmness with which all high-minded persons refuse to lend. There is a tone of sad resolution particularly applicable to such occasions, which should convey to the borrower that only motives of great moral altitude constrain us for the moment to override an earnest desire to part with our money. If it had not been for considerations of the public weal, we would most readily have given him ten times as much ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... produced by the Sun's disturbing force as the Earth approaches or recedes from him in her orbit. He also discovered another inequality in the Moon's motion, called the variation. He determined with greater exactness astronomical refractions from an altitude of 45 deg. downwards to the horizon, and constructed a catalogue of 777 stars. He also made a vast number of observations on planets, which formed the basis of the 'Rudolphine Tables,' and were of invaluable assistance ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... tide having ceased to run, they anchored at noon, and by the sun's meridional altitude, in 27 degrees 27 minutes 16 seconds south latitude. The third island, on which the natives were, bore W 4 degrees S one and a half or two miles distant, and the centres of the two northern ones N 40 degrees and N 15 degrees ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... swear it! But solely because you admire tall men more than broad views. Mr. Langan may be defined geometrically as length without breadth; altitude without position; a line on the landscape, ...
— The Miraculous Revenge - Little Blue Book #215 • Bernard Shaw

... the regret that seasoned Monsieur Paul's otherwise gracious and most graceful of farewells. Why cannot we all attain to an innkeeper's altitude, as a point of view from which to look out upon the world? Why not emulate his calm, when people who have done with us turn their backs and stalk away? Why not, like him, count the pennies as not all the payment received ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... instrument for ascertaining the heights of the Lunar mountains by the barometric pressure under which water boils, a sextant to measure the altitude of the Sun, a theodolite for taking horizontal or vertical angles, telescopes, of indispensable necessity when the travellers should approach the Moon,—all these instruments, carefully examined, were found to be still in perfect ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... them before because we never went where they lived—you were a long ways from your usual stamping-grounds, you know. That animal-vegetable flower is probably a high-altitude organism, living in the mountains and never coming as low as we are down here. As for the savages—whatever they are—they probably never come within five kilometers of the falls. Many primitive peoples think that waterfalls are inhabited by demons, and maybe these ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... castles, affords a more cultivated picture; but in the steep and craggy mountains of the Danube, in its wild outlines and dilapidated castles, the imagination embraces a bolder range. At one time the river is confined within its narrowest limits, and proceeds through a defile of considerable altitude, with overhanging rocks menacing destruction. At another it offers an open, wild archipelago of islands. The mountains have disappeared, and a long plain bounds on each side of the river its ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... found their ochre hue mysteriously neutralized. Angular shapes were draped so gracefully that unsymmetrical sharpness disappeared; too ample forms exchanged their air of uncouth corpulence for a well-defined roundness; low statures seemed to spring up to a nobler altitude, and women of masculine height sunk into feminine proportions. In short, Mademoiselle Melanie was not a mantua-maker, or milliner,—she was the genius of taste, the artful embodier of poetry in ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... reaching the top of Cheops, panting with the exertion of the laborious climb in which we had been assisted by three Bedouins, we looked down at the midgets moving on the sand below, and were convinced that the altitude stated by the guide was ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... other, of course, until he can graduate and get admitted to the bar and make a success that will enable him to support her as she deserves to be supported. The girl declines to wait. A much older man—a great, trampling brute of a man, possessed of wealth and fame, and a social altitude positively vertiginous—asks her to marry him. She, woman-weak, yields to the temptation of all the gauds and baubles that go with his name, and marries him. Indeed, few young men at the university ever have as valid an excuse for becoming broken-hearted ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... Having attained sufficient altitude to be safe from any possible pursuit and out of range of even the heaviest guns, Seaton stopped the vessel and went out into the main compartment to consult with the other members of the ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... the altitude of the cape of Gracias a Dios, near a certain little island called De las Pertas, his ship struck on a bank of sand, where it stuck so fast, as no art could get her off again, though they unladed all the guns, iron, and other weighty ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin

... been known that altitude increases the heart rate and tends to lower the systolic and diastolic blood pressures; that these conditions, though actively present at first, gradually return to normal, and that after a prolonged stay at the altitude may become nearly normal for the individual. Burker ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.

... of Jeypore was a generous patron of science, the chaprassis pilot you to the park given over to the apparatus of the celebrated Hindu astronomer and mathematician, Jai Singh. It contains dials, azimuth masonry, altitude pillars, astrolabe, and a double mural quadrant of enormous size and height, on which the gradations have been marked. In a way this exhibit of obsolete paraphernalia refutes the idea that Jeypore's maharajahs have lived solely for the gratification of the senses ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... Rodrigo and Joseph, physicians or advisers to the King, and men of great academic reputation. There was nothing known about cosmography or astronomy that Behaim did not know; and he had just come back from an expedition on which he had been despatched, with Rodrigo and Joseph, to take the altitude ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... glasses, Langdon saw Thor, and at almost the same instant the dogs appeared over the edge of the coulee. He had ridden halfway up the mountain; from that point he had climbed higher, and was following a well-beaten sheep trail at about the same altitude as Thor. From where he stood the valley lay under his glasses for miles. He did not have far to look to discover Bruce and the Indian. They were dismounting at the foot of the coulee, and as he gazed they ran ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... my novel The Heart of Life. In its general aspect it resembles my own early home, Denbury, but in some ways it is quite peculiar. In front of it is an Italian garden, below which are breaking waves, and behind it precipitous woods rise like a wall to an altitude of more than twelve hundred feet. The only approach to the house is by a carriage drive three miles long, which descends to it in zigzags from the upper ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... whole of that was put aside, and a new instrument, begun. By means of such perseverance, he succeeded in bringing various mathematical, philosophical, and astronomical instruments to perfection. The large theodolite for terrestrial measurements, and the equal altitude instrument for astronomy, will always be monuments of his fertile, penetrating, arduous, superior genius! There cannot be a lover (especially of this more difficult part) of philosophy, in any quarter of the globe, but must admire ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various

... interest is very largely due to Mr. Lowell's devotion to its study, both in seeking out so admirable a position as regards altitude and climate, and in establishing there a first-class observatory; and also in bringing his discoveries before the public in connection with a theory so startling as to compel attention. I venture to think that his merit as one of ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace

... foresee the issue of the mighty civil contest which rages around us. They are not at all involved in the awful passions which the war has engendered in our bosoms, and thus, cool and deliberate, from the great altitude of their assumed moral serenity and disinterestedness, they may in reality behold the division of our country already accomplished, whatever may be the result of our grand strategy ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... sextant and artificial horizon. We were rather late in making observations of the sun, and we only got one sight of it, which was made by myself. I brought it to a point within 180 yards of me on the level bank of the river, which altitude made our latitude 18 degrees 57 minutes. Thermometer showed 90 degrees at 7 a.m. and 103 degrees at noon. We got a fine potful of cabbage-tree sprouts, which ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough

... more long-winded calculations. All you need is one star in the sky on a dirty night to know instantly where you are. Look. I place the transparent scale on this star-map, revolving the scale on the North Pole. On the scale I've worked out the circles of altitude and the lines of bearing. All I do is to put it on a star, revolve the scale till it is opposite those figures on the map underneath, and presto! there you are, the ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... Languedoc and Guyenne the climate is regulated by three principal factors: the elevation of the soil, the influence of the Mediterranean, and the influence of the Atlantic. On the northern side of the Cevennes, the currents from the ocean, together with the altitude, do much to keep the air moist and comparatively cool in summer; whereas on the other side of the chain, where the Mediterranean influence—in a large measure African—is paramount, the climate is dry and torrid during the hot months. A liability to sudden changes goes with ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... "coggins." He had followed various callings—carpenter, market gardener, and grocer—with indifferent success; but he had succeeded in accumulating a few thousand dollars. His eldest girl was not well. Consumption ran in her mother's family. The doctor had ordered a dryer climate, a higher altitude. For some years Glass had been thinking of migrating westward; but he had stuck in the narrow groove, lacking the initiative to pull up stakes and see for himself the land in which others had prospered. This sickness had decided him—and ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... what exact date I do not know, an experimental voyage was made from the Hill of Dumbuck, near Glasgow, by Professor Geolls. He successfully negotiated the descent of the inclined plane, and rapidly rose in the air, until he reached an altitude of nearly 3 miles. Feeling giddy, he determined to descend to a mile and a half above the earth. "This I easily effected by depressing the tail of the machine, which, up to this moment, I had kept at an ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... should be isolated and sleep in a large, well ventilated room. In spring and summer weather, the child is better in the open air all day. In the winter the child should be warmly clothed. Pine wood and a fairly high altitude are probably the best. The greatest care should be taken in all seasons to keep from taking cold, or bad bronchitis or pneumonia may result. All complications are serious, especially in nursing children. There should ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... gone—their first day in camp—and night was upon them. A gray light, mingling with the faint afterglow of twilight, showed clearly the outlines of the distant mountains. The stars blinked down from their heavenly dome and the air was cool and comfortable, thanks to the altitude. To the silent watchers it seemed that no skies were ever so deep and clear as those ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond

... Besides a fountain, and other attractive objects, the park is adorned by a statue of Commodore Perry, erected in 1860 in commemoration of his victory on Lake Erie in 1813. It is of Italian marble, eight feet high, and stands upon a granite pedestal twelve feet in altitude. The most noteworthy buildings are the postoffice, the city hall, the county court house, and the Cleveland medical college. The Union Railway depot, an immense structure of stone near the lake shore, is one of the largest of the kind in ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler

... communication between the two ships, a distance not exceeding half a cable's length, as well as from the ships to the house on shore, a line was kept extended, as a guide from one to the other. The meridian, altitude of the sun was observed this day by an artificial horizon, which I noticed from the circumstance of its being the last time we had an opportunity of observing it for about ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... before completing the manoeuvre I received another deadly burst of fire, which, though it somehow missed me, shot away several of my control wires. What happened next I cannot be sure, but the machine seemed to turn over, and my machine gun fell off with a crash. This took place at an altitude of six thousand feet. My next impression was that I seemed to be in the centre of a whirling vortex, around which all creation revolved at an extraordinary speed, and realised that my trusty steed was indulging in a particularly violent "spinning nose dive." A "spin" at the best of times ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight

... rapidity as he could excite his meager beast to endure without coming to an open rupture. Until now this personage had escaped the observation of the travelers. If he possessed the power to arrest any wandering eye when exhibiting the glories of his altitude on foot, his equestrian graces were still more ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe—the starry heavens above me, and the moral law within me. I need not search for them, and vaguely guess concerning them, as if they were veiled in darkness or hidden in the infinite altitude. I see them before me, and link them immediately with the consciousness of my existence. The former begins from the spot I occupy in the outer world of sense, and enlarges my connection with it to a boundless extent with worlds upon worlds and ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... as imposing and as rugged as the tallest shaft of marble in the little cemetery on the edge of the town. No one questioned his power and authority, no one misjudged his altitude, and no one overlooked his dignity. For twenty-eight years he had served Tinkletown and himself in the triple capacity of town marshal, fire chief and street commissioner. He had a system of government peculiarly his own; and no one possessed the heart or temerity to upset it, no matter what ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon

... height, I mean, as it reaches to the top of the scenic wall; the other dimensions are not remarkable. The division to the right, as you face the stage, is pointed out as the green-room; its portentous altitude and the open arches at the top give it the air of a well. The compartment on the left is exactly similar, save that it opens into the traces of other chambers, said to be those of a hippodrome adjacent to the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... stinging, as it sometimes was,—could never turn really harsh and easterly; neither, perhaps, could it ever take on the soft languor of the summer sea. And Amy Lovejoy's nature would always have the finer, more individual quality of the high, pure altitude in which she had been reared. Possibly Stephen Burns had yet something to learn about that agreeable climate with which he was so ready to compare his love. The weather had been perfect since he came to Colorado. How could he suspect the meaning of a tiny ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... partridges from the turnips, and surprising, at some sudden bend in the footpath, the rabbits at their play. It is not without excitement to steer one's course over unknown and forsaken ground by chart and compass. These needful guides then prove their value, and in a hilly country an altitude-barometer is a friend not to be despised. It is not without some pride in one's self-reliance to find one's self five miles from a railway station, as I did at Stapleford Abbotts; and, though my special quest was all in vain at several halting-places that day, I met with a ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent

... mountain heights of song, But felt the touch of some good woman's palm; None ever reached God's altitude of calm, But heard one voice cry, "Follow!" ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... which guided those attending entertainments where Dutch and natives met. As for instance, when the Sultan of Djoedja gives a ball, each official must stand upon a step, high or low, in proportion to his rank, while the Resident is met and escorted to the same lofty altitude as the Sultan, on ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser

... for pulling a sledge on ski was found at a temperature of about 16 deg.. But there is no doubt whatever that ponies should do their work at night, when the temperature is colder, and rest and sleep when the sun has its greatest altitude and power. And so we camped and turned in to our sleeping-bags at 4 P.M. and marched again soon after midnight, doing five miles before and five miles after lunch: lunch, if you please, being about 1 A.M., and a very good time, for just then the daylight seemed to be thin ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... but for some generous outburst, some upheaval of old Mother Earth, wishing that her rock-ribbed sons, as well as graceful daughters, might enjoy the light, the sunshine and the shower—but for this soul of love in matter as well as mind—these bluffs and the sons of Adam, too, might not boast the altitude they glory in to-day. Those who have ears to hear discern low, rumbling noises that foretell convulsions in our social world that may, perchance, in the next upheaval, bring woman to the surface; up, up, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... and was aware that in some matters her friend would condescend—to fib. Lizzie's poetry, and romance, and high feelings, had never had the ring of true soundness in Lucy's ears. But her imagination was not strong enough to soar to the altitude of the lies which Lizzie was now telling. She did believe that the property which Lizzie was called upon to restore was held to be objectionable by Lord Fawn simply because it had reached Lizzie from the hands of her late husband. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... are in close proximity, a dozen or so within a radius of as many miles, but this Dunk Island is the chief of its group, the largest in area, the highest in altitude, the nearest the mainland, the fairest, the best. It possesses a well-sheltered haven (herein to be known as Brammo Bay), and three perennially running creeks mark a further splendid distinction. It has a superficial area of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... Capt. E.T. Morton. A short treatise on the simpler methods of finding position at sea by the observation of the sun's altitude and the use of the sextant and chronometer. It is arranged especially for yachtsmen and amateurs who wish to know the simpler formulae for the necessary navigation involved in taking a boat anywhere off ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt

... from a perpendicular line, the angle of inclination being universally to windward. This was rapidly succeeded by a second, third, and fourth shower, each acquiring greater velocity, and overtopping the other, till they had attained an altitude as much above the level of our eye as the sea was ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... manuscripts with editors' regrets, were on their way to poor devils of scribblers living in the altitude of unrecognised genius and a garret. There were cringing, fawning epistles, written with a smirk and sealed with a scowl; some there were couched in a refinement of cruelty that cut ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... charming fillette, who lived next door to the school, overset my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the spheres of my studies. I, however, struggled on with my sines and co-sines for a few days more; but stepping into the garden one charming noon to take the sun's altitude, there ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... Detector shows traffic approaching, bound due east, seven hundred miles an hour, high altitude.... Correction; six-fifty miles. Correction; six hundred." He paused. "Traffic is decelerating rapidly. I think, sir, this is the ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... he framed a more unfortunate wish. On the instant he shot up from an altitude of four feet six to ten feet. Fortunately his clothes expanded proportionally. So, instead of being below the medium height, he was raised more ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... Paris was an important event. Every one, from the smallest to the greatest, was deeply interested in it, while to the man of science it was one of the most exciting of incidents. For the purpose of observing the altitude to which the balloon rose, and the course it took, Le Gentil was on the observatory, Prevost was on one of the towers of Notre Dame, Jeaurat was on La Place Louis XV., and d'Agelet was on the Champ de Mars. It was only Lalande ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion

... with trepidation and equivocation, Mr. Sullivan approached with confidence and joy. "What," he asked himself, "is the chief characteristic of the tall office building? It is lofty. This loftiness is to the artist-nature its thrilling aspect. It must be tall. The force of altitude must be in it. It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a dissenting line." The Prudential (Guaranty) building in Buffalo represents ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... plump, rich in quality, and especially pleasing in flavor. The one weak point of the Tasterite appears to be in the matter of size, but this smallness is well offset by superiority in the points just mentioned, and also in what is perhaps more important, the latitude and altitude of the place of origin. Any variety which will yield heavy crops of nuts distinctly superior to the average black walnut in cracking quality and kernel merit at a 42-degree latitude plus, and a 2,000-foot altitude, should be potentially very ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... electricity, and the degree of transparency of the air on the brinks of the craters of Pichincha and Jorullo; they also contain topographical plans and geological profiles of these mountains, founded in part on the measure of vertical bases, and on angles of altitude. Each observation has been calculated according to the tables and the methods which are considered most exact in the present state of our knowledge; and in order to judge of the degree of confidence which the results may ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... place to live up here, but on this side you need a ladder to get to it. The little village is going to die—too much altitude. It's a horse killer. No team can draw anything but its breath going up that hill. It's all right for a generation of walkers, but the time has come when we must go faster than a walk and carry ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... eleven inches and a half." And, rising, he exhibited to its full advantage that very creditable altitude, more tall perhaps than graceful, at present; since, like most youths, he did not as yet quite know what to do with his legs and arms. But ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... himself to remote Spots that were supplied with Steam Heat and French Cooking, together with Wines, Liquors, and Cigars, but no matter what the Altitude or the Relative Humidity, he felt discouraged every Morning when he awoke and remembered that presently he would have to rally his Vital Forces and walk all the ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... produced, and the mind of a Shakspere towers over the whole, in all the grandeur of unapproachable infinity. That which is infinite admits of neither increase nor diminution. Is it not so with genius of a certain altitude? Homer, Milton, Shakspere, were perhaps men of equal powers. Homer was, it is said, a beggar; Shakspere an illiterate wool-comber; Milton skilled in all human learning. But they have all risen to an equal height. Learning has added nothing to the illimitable genius of the one; nor has ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... is largely marked by altitude. The city, lying in the lap of the hills and looking a little down upon the valley—plebeian business together with those who do the work of Fairlands occupies the lowest levels in the corporate limits. The heights are held by Fairlands' Pride. Between these two ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... floating vapours; and he advises those who may repeat his observations to admit at first to the eye a small portion of the sun's light, till it is gradually accustomed to its full splendour. When the sun's altitude became considerable, Fabricius gave up his observations, which he often continued so long that he was scarcely able, for two days together, to see objects with their usual distinctness. Fabricius speaks of observing the ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... asked Lord Marnell, looking down from his altitude upon the slight frail figure at his side. "Is he not a ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt

... marking the progress of death over each one of them, she left the Palace hospital, and took a chalet, where she lived aloof with her own little invalid. Instead of improving Lionello's condition, the high altitude aggravated it. His fever waxed greater. Grazia spent nights of anguish. Christophe knew it by his keen intuition, although she told him nothing: for she was growing more and more rigid in her pride; she longed for Christophe ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... starry night overhead, and the flare of torches lighting up a seething mass of faces below, of bronzed limbs and bright-tinted rags dangling at every altitude from the palm rafters and decayed stairway, the scene was more weirdly fascinating than as one generally sees it—in mosques or in the open daylight. There were wild strains of music and song; a wave of disquietude, clearly, was passing over the beholders. These performances, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... halted and turned their backs to the storm, but the wind increased more and more, and was attended with terrific thunder and lightning, which filled the soldiers with alarm, as they were at such an altitude as to be themselves enveloped in the clouds from which the peals and flashes were emitted. Unwilling to retreat, Hannibal ordered the army to encamp on the spot, in the best shelter they could find. They attempted, accordingly, to pitch their tents, but it was impossible to ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... a Dalziel in the army, and a Judas Sharp in the church, amongst others inrolled in the annals of time, (and we may fear in eternity too) are terrible monuments of this.—It is true, all this black group attained not the same altitude of wickedness; but they all acted from the same principle, and bended toward the same point, and that was to propagate Satan's kingdom, and persecute the saints of the Most High, as far as their power, station and ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... six weeks of his leave, Eagle March made himself very popular in England. He secured a record for altitude, and flew upside down longer than any one else had at that time, two years ago, which is a whole age in the aeroplane world. He did other quaint tricks, too, that nobody had thought of or accomplished then, such as walking on a wing of the monoplane when she was in the air; ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... clime alone the tint controls, On every shore, by altitude of poles; A different cast the glowing zone demands, In Paria's groves, from Tombut's burning sands, Unheeded agents, for the sense too fine, With every pulse, with every thought combine, Thro air and ocean, with their changes run, Breathe from the ground, or circle with the sun. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... the twelfth and the pointed arch in the two succeeding centuries. Its progress was the realisation of three great aims, towards which the Romanesque architects were ever striving—the perfecting of the arcuated and vaulted construction, the increase of the altitude of their proportion, and the general adding of refinement and delicacy ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story

... "I am, but the eternal friend is at least two forms higher; he, let me tell you, is a star of no ordinary magnitude; he's in the Thicksides"—meaning the Thucydides' class. "You'll require no end of sky-climbing before you reach his altitude. And now, victim, behold your sacrificial priest," he said, placing Walter at the end of a table among some thirty boys who were seated in front of a master's desk in the large schoolroom, in various parts of which other forms were also beginning ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... said, "Why, of course, Martha, you ought to know that things do not cook as quickly at this altitude as they do down at the sea level. We are thousands of feet above the sea here in Wyoming." (I am not sure it was thousands, but it was hundreds ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes

... not to dilate and expand under such skies. One breathes deeply and steps proudly, and if he have any of the eagle nature in him, it comes to the surface then. There is a sense of altitude about these dazzling November and December days, of mountain-tops and pure ether. The earth in passing through the fire of summer seems to have lost all its dross, and life ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... down one of the same posts used for the scaffold, is an improved crane. Its action depends upon the proposition in geometry that if the length of the base of a triangle be altered, its angles, and therefore its altitude, are altered. A portion of the vertical post up and down which the crane climbs forms the base of a triangle, and a portion of the jib, together with the stay, forms the remaining two sides. Hence, by causing the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various

... in the poetic character? Then we are indeed in a hard case. There is no unanimity of opinion among us regarding the supreme English poet of the last century, and if we dared follow personal taste in declaring one of higher altitude than all the others only a small percentage of readers would be satisfied when we set up the Prelude or Adonais or Childe Harold or Sordello beside the Republic as containing the one portrait of the ideal singer worthy to stand beside the portrait of the ideal philosopher. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... vacant chair two places from Mina and nodded at her in a friendly way. They were at a round table, and there were only a dozen there. The easy-mannered youth told her all about them, including several things which it is to be hoped were not true; he seemed to view them from an altitude of good-humored contempt. Mina discovered afterward that he was a cousin of Lady Flora's, and occupied a position in Messrs Coutts's ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... of that. But, for example, the sprightly little woman was very sure of it, she said. So Mr Dorrit bought a gift of each sort, and paid handsomely for it. As he strolled back to his hotel afterwards, he carried his head high: having plainly got up his castle now to a much loftier altitude than the two ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... interposed the Captain, waking up and taking a guess at the sun's altitude in the grey heavens. "We're late this morning: better march 'em up to the ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... so much excited Mr. Yule's admiration, was named by him Mount Victoria, and between it and the shore were several ranges of inferior altitude, which gave him "every reason to believe that the lower regions ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... finished on the attic floor. Being built on the hillside, its basement opens into the rear yard. It was at first heated by means of open coal grates, which may not have been altogether adequate in severe winters, owing to the altitude and the north-eastern exposure, but a large furnace is one of the more modern changes. Milan itself is not materially unlike the smaller Ohio towns of its own time or those of later creation, but the venerable appearance ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... them how the coffee was grown upon a certain part of the mountain slopes, since it did not do well in the valleys, preferring a higher altitude. ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy

... flourished, and where raw food was suitable. These traditions, and probably also the economy of fuel, cause it to be still persisted in, in a climate to which it is wholly unsuited. Near Tzarskoe I found one variety of pea growing to the altitude of nearly seven feet, and producing pods seven inches long and three wide. The stalks of the double poppies in the same garden were six and seven feet high, and the flowers were the size of peonies, while the pods of the single poppies were nine ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... gradually ascending, so that at about six miles from the landing place they reached the crest of the rising ground. Beyond, where the nature of the ground permitted they saw clearly that the distance beyond had a lower altitude than the place ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay

... who have so far given evidence of nothing better than a fatal fluency in insipid imitation of true lyric poets should fall down a precipice in the attempt to scale the very pinnacles of Parnassus. There is something heroic about the most unmitigated disaster at such an altitude. ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... plains and plateaus could be crossed by the trunk-roads, the rest of the country is so broken up by mountain and valley that it presented few facilities either to foreign penetration or to external control. The physical barriers to local intercourse, reinforced by striking differences in soil, altitude, and climate, while they precluded Syria herself from attaining national unity, always tended to protect her separate provinces, or "kingdoms," from the full effects of foreign aggression. One city-state could be traversed, devastated, or annexed, without ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... Victoria, driven along at a speed of a little more than eight miles, very visibly neared the coast of the mainland. The doctor, thereupon, determined to descend a little nearer to the ground. So he moderated the flame of his cylinder, and the balloon, in a few moments, had descended to an altitude only three hundred feet ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... out; and English has easily absorbed, in America, all the other idioms which have been brought into contact, rather than competition, with it. The result is that the English language occupies a unique position among the tongues of the earth. It is unique in two dimensions—in altitude and in expanse. It soars to the highest heights of human utterance, and it covers an unequalled area of the earth's surface. Undoubtedly it is the most precious heirloom of our race, and as such we must reverence ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... true, but it is quite a different matter when one is flying above hostile troops who are blazing away at him with rifles and machine-guns. During reconnaissance work the airmen generally are compelled to ascend to an altitude of a mile or a mile and a quarter, which makes observation extremely difficult, as small objects, even with the aid of the strongest glasses, assume unfamiliar shapes and become fore- shortened. If, in order to obtain a better view, they venture to ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell

... covered with perpetual snow, and almost constantly involved in clouds. No means for ascertaining the height of the central, and probably the highest peaks of Emodus, have come to my knowledge; but, while at Kathmandu, Colonel Crawford had an opportunity of observing the altitude of several of the detached peaks, the situations of which will be seen from the accompanying map, copied from one of this excellent geographer. {88b} The accompanying table also will give the result of his ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... artillery had previously been strengthened and was directed against the support and reserve lines, to prevent the Germans from massing for counter-attacks and to break up their formations. Aircraft carried out reconnaissance during the battle from a low altitude and harassed the defenders with fire action. An advance was made into the strongest part of the German defensive system on a twenty-mile front to a depth of five miles, and secured upwards of 11,000 prisoners, 150 guns, and considerable quantities of stores and materials, and although after-events ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous

... the greatest importance in successful cultivation. No amount of skill will enable even a clever gardener to grow good fruit in a bad site. Where the land is low and swampy, exposed therefore to frosts more than ground at a higher altitude, the effort would be useless. Stagnant water moreover produces canker, and soon ruins trees. Pears love a deep moist soil, but not water that lies for any length of time about the roots. On a hillside, where the slope is more than gradual, ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum

... subscription will be extended enough to cover all missed issues, and we hope soon to report that the goose remains suspended at a favorable altitude. People who have tried to run a funny paper and entertain a congregation of large piebald measles at the same time will understand something of the tact, finesse, and hot sassafras tea required to do so. ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... Station. The pigeon, conveying an urgent message from the French police, was tossed through the railway carriage window as the train moved from the Admiralty Pier, the wind being west, the atmosphere hazy, but the sun shining. For more than a minute the bird circled round till it attained an altitude of about half-a-mile, and then it sailed away Londonwards. By this time the engine had got full steam on, and the train was tearing away at the rate of sixty miles an hour; but the carrier was more than a match for it. Taking a line midway between Maidstone and ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... sharp-pointed things which if they were not used voluntarily would be considered instruments of torture. Think of the man who is testing the force of dynamite—who is holding lightning bolts in his hand and forcing them to do the work which he has planned for them, who is taking the altitude of the mountains in Mars in his observatory in the air at midnight,—think of these men stopping to swear while they ran the murderous little weapon through six thicknesses of buckram, lining, velvet, lace, feathers, ribbon and hair—to fasten on ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various

... take up the passengers; but no such idea entered their heads. I imagine such an indication of civilization would have been at variance with their republican notions of liberty; and the fair ones had no alternative but to pull their garments up to the altitude of those of a ballet-dancer, and to bury their neat feet and well-turned ankles deep, deep, deep in the filthy mire. But what made this conduct irresistibly ludicrous—though painful to any gentleman to witness—was ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... and oil of, 510. ———, trees, oil of the, productive of leprosy if not properly prepared, 91. Ashantee, intercourse through, with Timbuctoo objectionable, and why, 249. Atlas, foot of, a productive country, 74. Table land in, and produce of, 75. Narrow defile or pass, 76. Calculated altitude of, 93. Attarites, or Ait Attar, a tribe of Berebbers, 124. Audiences of the emperor, introductory, of business, of leave or departure, 89. Author's intelligence respecting the interior of Africa, considered valuable, 99. ———, travels in ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... the yacht down to a bare four-hundred-mile altitude. He stopped it there. It was highly satisfactory. He made quite certain that everything worked as it should. Then he made a call ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster

... globe-trotter; but to one who lives upon its sides, Mount Saint Helena soon becomes a centre of interest. It is the Mont Blanc of one section of the Californian Coast Range, none of its near neighbours rising to one-half its altitude. It looks down on much green, intricate country. It feeds in the spring-time many splashing brooks. From its summit you must have an excellent lesson of geography: seeing, to the south, San Francisco Bay, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... big, and huddling ourselves together for warmth, swallowed what remained of our brandy—barely a mouthful each—and tried to forget our miseries in sleep. But the cold was too intense to allow us to do so, for I am convinced that at this great altitude the thermometer cannot have marked less than fourteen or fifteen degrees below freezing point. What such a temperature meant to us, enervated as we were by hardship, want of food, and the great heat of the desert, the reader may imagine better than I can describe. Suffice it to say that it was ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... elevating lever and the huge air craft soared into the sky. And not until they had reached an altitude of a thousand feet did Hal straighten the machine out for a ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes

... so recognized. The Silences intervening between tones tunewise, or in respect to altitude, are, in Musical Nomenclature, denominated Intervals. Timewise Silences, or those which intervene between Tones rhythmically considered, are called Rests. The Intervals of Silence between Syllables and Words, in Oral Speech, are represented in the printed book ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... nasty process it is,—inspecting the granaries belonging to the hacienda, and dodging between the rows of Indian corn, which grows here to so prodigious a height as to rival the famous grain which is said to grow somewhere down South, and to attain such an altitude that a Comanche perched upon the head of a giraffe is invisible between the rows. About noon we had breakfast, and that was the hardest work of all. Item, we had mutton-chops, beefsteaks, veal cutlets, omelets, rice, hominy, fried tomatoes, and an infinity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... good in the development of mind. It has now reached such an altitude, and it shines with such lustre, that our imagination can hardly find the way down to the morning horizon of its life, and measure its scope and power in the dim twilight of its first hours in time. The simple fact of its first condition would now seem to ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... of the sun's upper and lower limbs in an artificial horizon, the latitude was 21 deg. 50' 18", and the ship bore from thence S. 68 deg. E. two miles and a half; the latitude of the ship should therefore have been 21 deg. 51' 14"; but a meridian altitude observed to the north by lieutenant Flinders, gave 21 deg. 49' 54"; and I believe that altitudes from the sea horizon can never be depended on nearer than to one minute, on account of the variability of the horizontal refraction. From this cause ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders



Words linked to "Altitude" :   ALT, altitude sickness, level, length, ceiling, angular position, height, distance, altitudinal, high-altitude



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