Technology

"Se non è vero è ben trovato."

"Originality is going back to the origin and finding an empty chair. Would you gladly sit on it? No thank you. It is empty for a reason. That’s where my ass was. Not where my head is now."

"INVENTOR, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization."

"A tool is but the extension of a man's hand, and a machine is but a complex tool. And he that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the well-being of mankind."

"To put a girdle round about the world."

"Light is the first begotten, and the first emanation of the Supreme, and Light is Life, says the Evangelist [and the Kabalist]. Both are electricity — the life principle, the Anima Mundi — pervading the Universe, the electric vivifier of all things. p. 633"

"We are told that Mr. Keely defines electricity "as a certain form of atomic vibration." In this he is quite right; but this is Electricity on the terrestrial plane, and through terrestrial correlations. p. 613"

"The Nasmyth willow leaves, mistaken by Sir John Herschell for "solar inhabitants," are the reservoirs of solar vital energy; "the vital electricity that feeds the whole system; the sun in abscondito ;being thus the storehouse of our little Cosmos, self-generating its vital fluid, and ever receiving as much as it gives out," and the visible Sun only a window cut into the real solar palace and presence, which, however, shews without distortion the interior work. p. 592"

"We have an important scientific corroboration for one of our fundamental dogmas — namely, that (a) the Sun is the store-house of Vital Force, which is the Noumenon of Electricity; and {b) that it is from its mysterious, never-to-be-fathomed depths, that issue those lifecurrents which thrill through Space, as through the organisms of every living thing on Earth. p. 579"

"The science of electricity, which was not yet in existence when he [Boehme] wrote, is there anticipated [in his writings]; and not only does Boehme describe all the now known phenomena of that force, but he even gives us the origin, generation, and birth of electricity, itself. p. 535"

"Sir William Grove... in a lecture at the London Institution, in 1842, was the first to show that "heat, light, may be considered as affections of matter itself, and not of a distinct ethereal, 'imponderable,' fluid [a state of matter now] permeating it." Yet, perhaps, for some Physicists... Force and Forces were tacitly "Spirit [and hence Spirits] in Nature." What several rather mystical Scientists taught was that light, heat, magnetism, electricity and gravity, etc., were not the final Causes of the visible phenomena, including planetary motion, but were themselves the secondary effects of other Causes, for which Science in our day cares very little, but in which Occultism believes; for the Occultists have exhibited proofs of the validity of their claims in every age. And in what age were there no Occultists and no Adepts? p. 525"

"If, as Sir William Grove says, the electricity we handle is but the result of ordinary matter affected by something invisible, the intimate generating power" of every Force, the "one omnipresent influence," then it only becomes natural that one should believe as the Ancients did; namely, that every Element is dual in its nature. p.508"

"An ideal's love-fraught, imperious call That bids the spheres become articulate."

"A million hearts here wait our call, All naked to our distant speech— I wish that I could ring them all And have some welcome news for each."

"But matchless Franklin! What a few Can hope to rival such as you. Who seized from kings their sceptred pride And turned the lightning's darts aside."

"Notwithstanding my experiments with electricity the thunderbolt continues to fall under our noses and beards; and as for the tyrant, there are a million of us still engaged at snatching away his sceptre."

"A vast engine of wonderful delicacy and intricacy, a machine that is like the tools of the Titans put in your hands. This machinery, in its external fabric so massive and so exquisitely adjusted, and in its internal fabric making new categories of thought, new ways of thinking about life."

"And stoic Franklin's energetic shade Robed in the lightnings which his hand allay'd."

"While Franklin's quiet memory climbs to heaven, Calming the lightning which he thence hath riven."

"Stretches, for leagues and leagues, the Wire, A hidden path for a Child of Fire— Over its silent spaces sent, Swifter than Ariel ever went, From continent to continent."

"Go hug your girlfriend! Or if you don't have any, go find one! You won't find the meaning of life with electricity!"

"Electric current, after passing into the earth travels to the diametrically opposite region of the same and rebounding from there, returns to its point of departure with virtually undiminished force. The outgoing and returning currents clash and form nodes and loops similar to those observable on a vibrating cord. To traverse the entire distance of about twenty-five thousand miles, equal to the circumference of the globe, the current requires a certain time interval, which I have approximately ascertained. In yielding this knowledge, nature has revealed one of its most precious secrets, of inestimable consequence to man. So astounding are the facts in this connection, that it would seem as though the Creator, himself, had electrically designed this planet just for the purpose of enabling us to achieve wonders which, before my discovery, could not have been conceived by the wildest imagination."

"One can prophesy with a Daniel's confidence that skilled electricians will settle the battles of the near future. But this is the least. In its effect upon war and peace, electricity offers still much greater and more wonderful possibilities. To stop war by the perfection of engines of destruction alone, might consume centuries and centuries. Other means must be employed to hasten the end."

"At the beginning of the Great Depression, the vast majority of rural communities across the United States had little or no access to electricity. The cost of connecting to private electric lines was so prohibitive that many rural communities turned to organizing amongst themselves to find creative solutions to electrification. In 1935, the federal government established the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) to support the formation of rural electric cooperatives. Over the following decades, this initiative thoroughly transformed rural life, extending electricity to rural businesses, farms, schools, and households and establishing a large network of utilities cooperatives that continue to provide services to rural areas today."

"Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be Ere one can say "It lightens.""

"I'll put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes."

"Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul, And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole."

"Without electricity, there can be no art."

"Is it a fact—or have I dreamt it—that by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the round globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence: or shall we say it is itself a thought, nothing but thought, and no longer the substance which we dreamed it."

"In 1881, Edison built electricity generating stations at Pearl Street in Manhattan and Holborn in London. Within a year, he was selling electricity as a commodity. A year later, the first electric motors were driving manufacturing machinery. Yet by 1900, less than 5% of mechanical drive power in American factories was coming from electric motors. The age of steam lingered."

"We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles."

"Controlling fires is an enormously difficult challenge. Our research has shown that by applying large electric fields we can suppress flames very rapidly. We're very excited about the results of this relatively unexplored area of research."

"Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound."

"And fire a mine in China, here With sympathetic gunpowder."

"The Aurora Borealis and Australis (Aurora)... take place at the very centres of terrestrial electric and magnetic forces. The two Poles are said to be the store-houses, the receptacles and liberators, at the same time, of cosmic and terrestrial Vitality (Electricity), from the surplus of which the Earth, had it not been for these two natural safety-valves, would have been rent to pieces long ago. p. 226"

"Electricity is not only Substance, but that it is an emanation from an Entity, which is neither God nor Devil, but one of the numberless Entities that rule and guide our world, according to the eternal Iaw of Karma. p. 137"

"It seems ridiculous to argue that because a thing is imponderable to Science, therefore it cannot be called matter. Electricity is "immaterial," in the sense that its molecules are not subject to perception and experiment; yet it may be — and Occultism says it is — atomic; therefore it is matter. But even supposing it were unscientific to speak of it in such terms, once Electricity is called in Science a source of Energy, Energy simply, and a Force — where is that Force or that Energy which can be thought of without thinking of matter? p. 137"

"Col. Olcott, was taken to task for asserting in one of his lectures that Electricity is matter. Such, nevertheless, is the teaching of the Occult Doctrine. "Force," "Energy," may be better names for it, so long as European Science knows so little about its true nature; yet matter it is, as much as Ether is matter, since it is as atomic, though indeed several removes from Ether. p. 136"

"Russia is the largest energy power. The country with a unique energy system, one of the leaders in generating electricity and supplying it to the global market. This is the result of your hard work and professionalism. Each of you (energy complex's worker and veteran) does everything to ensure that the country's energy system stays reliable."

"Eripuit cælo fulmen, mox sceptra tyrannis."

"This is a marvel of the universe: To fling a thought across a stretch of sky— Some weighty message, or a yearning cry, It matters not; the elements rehearse Man's urgent utterance, and his words traverse The spacious heav'ns like homing birds that fly Unswervingly, until, upreached on high, A quickened hand plucks off the message terse."

"Whose noble praise Deserves a quill pluckt from an angel's wing."

"Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre."

"The swifter hand doth the swift words outrun: Before the tongue hath spoke the hand hath done."

"When a filled pen is held point downwards, the ink it contains is acted on by a variety of forces, among which may be reckoned gravity, inertia, capillary attraction, air pressure, friction, and the viscosity of the liquid, as well as several minor forces. If the pen is properly made, these forces are in a state of equilibrium, and the ink does not run out of the reservoir. As soon, however, as the point touches a surface it is capable of wetting, the action of the capillary attraction is altered, with the result that the ink is enabled to flow from the reservoir, and that the pen writes."

"While the language of the lips is fleeting as the breath itself, and confined to a single spot as well as to a single moment, the language of the pen enjoys, in many instances, an adamantine existence, and will only perish amid the ruins of the globe. Before its mighty touch time and space become annihilated; it joins epoch to epoch, and pole to pole.[…] But for this, everything would be doubt, and darkness, and death-shade; all knowledge would be traditionary and all experience local; civilized life would relapse into barbarism, and man would have to run through his little, and comparatively insignificant round of existence, the perpetual sport of ignorance and error, uninstructed by science, unregulated by laws, and unconsoled by Revelation."

"The pen is mightier than the sword."

"The pen wherewith thou dost so heavenly sing Made of a quill from an angel's wing."

"Oh! nature's noblest gift—my gray-goose quill! Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will, Torn from thy parent-bird to form a pen, That mighty instrument of little men!"

"Hinc quam sit calamus sævior euse, patet."