Download or read book The Diamond Lens written by Fitz-james O'brien and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-02-05 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: But notwithstanding these discoveries, laboriously and painfully made as they were, I felt horribly dissatisfied. At every step I found myself stopped by the imperfections of my instruments. Like all active microscopists, I gave my imagination full play. Indeed, it is a common complaint against many such that they supply the defects of their instruments with the creations of their brains. I imagined depths beyond depths in nature which the limited power of my lenses prohibited me from exploring. I lay awake at night constructing imaginary micro-scopes of immeasurable power, with which I seemed to pierce through all the envelopes of matter down to its original atom. How I cursed those imperfect mediums which necessity through ignorance compelled me to use! How I longed to discover the secret of some perfect lens, whose magnifying power should be limited only by the resolvability of the object, and which at the same time should be free from spherical and chromatic aberrations—in short, from all the obstacles over which the poor microscopist finds himself continually stumbling! I felt convinced that the simple microscope, composed of a single lens of such vast yet perfect power, was possible of construction. To attempt to bring the compound microscope up to such a pitch would have been commencing at the wrong end; this latter being simply a partially successful endeavor to remedy those very defects of the simplest instrument which, if conquered, would leave nothing to be desired.
Download or read book The Diamond Lens and Other Stories written by Fitz-James O'Brien and published by Hesperus Press. This book was released on 2023-12-01 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An absorbing and haunting collection of early science fiction tales by an Irish-American author Fitz-James O'Brien capitalized on the success of his predecessors Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Shelley in writing disturbing stories with demented protagonists, and this collection of three tales shows his mastery of the macabre. "The Diamond Lens" tells of a lone scientist's discovery of a microcosmic world within a drop of water, and his growing obsession with the beautiful Animula, a fair maiden within this world which he can see but never enter. His uncompromising pursuit of knowledge at any cost foreshadows the mad scientist familiar to readers in a multitude of works. In "What Was It?" an invisible man is discovered by residents of a boarding house. The residents' capture and investigation of the creature blends the fantastic with the scientific as they seek rational explanations for this extraordinary phenomenon. "The Wondersmith" is a macabre tale of an embittered toymaker who seeks revenge upon the society that has persecuted him by creating demonic mannequins and imbuing them with life in order to slaughter the masses— a fantastic melodrama in which the cunning Wondersmith is offset by the unassuming and unlikely hero Solon the hunchback, in love with the villain's daughter.
Download or read book The Diamond Lens written by Fitz-James O’Brien and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-10-19 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How I longed to discover the secret of some perfect lens, whose magnifying power should be limited only by the resolvability of the object, and which at the same time should be free from spherical and chromatic aberrations, in short from all the obstacles over which the poor microscopist finds himself continually stumbling!
Download or read book The diamond lens and other stories collected and ed by W Winter written by Michael Fitz-James De C. O'Brien and published by . This book was released on 1887 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Diamond Lens and Other Stories written by Fitz James O'Brien and published by Ams PressInc. This book was released on 1932 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Diamond Lens with Other Stories written by Fitz James O'Brien and published by . This book was released on 1885 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Diamond Lens with Other Stories written by Fitz James O'Brien and published by Theclassics.Us. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 edition. Excerpt: ... meaning: desperate appeals, perhaps, from Tom, the baker's assistant, to Amelia, the daughter of the dry-goods retailer, who is always selling at a sacrifice in consequence of the late fire. That may be Tom himself who is now passing me in a white apron, and I look up at the windows of the house (which does not, however, give any signs of a recent conflagration) and almost hope to see Amelia wave a white pocket-handkerchief. The bit of orange-peel lying on the sidewalk inspires thought. Who will fall over it 1 who but the industrious mother of six children, the youngest of which is only nine months old, all of whom are dependent on her exertions for support 1 I see her slip and tumble. I see the pale face convulsed with agony, and the vain struggle to get up; the pitying crowd closing her off from all air; the anxious young doctor who happened to be passing by; the manipulation of the broken limb, the shake of the head, the moan of the victim, the litter borne on men's shoulders, the gates of the New York Hospital unclosing, the subscription taken up on the spot. There is some food for speculation in that three-year-old, tattered child, masked with dirt, who is throwing a brick at another three-year-old, tattered child, masked with dirt. It is not difficult to perceive that he is destined to lurk, as it were, through life. His bad, flat face -- or, at least, what can be seen of it -- does not look as if it were made for the light of day. The mire in which he wallows now is but a type of the moral mire in which he will wallow hereafter. The feeble little hand lifted at this instant to smite his companion, half in earnest, half in jest, will be raised against his fellowbeings forevermore, Golosh Street -- as I will call this nameless lane...
Download or read book The Diamond Lens with Other Stories Collected and Edited with a Sketch of the Author by W Winter A New Edition written by Fitz-James O'BRIEN and published by . This book was released on 1885 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Diamond Lens and Other Stories With an Introd by Gilbert Seldes Illus by Ferdinand Huszti Horvath written by Michael Fitz-James DeCourcy O'Brien and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The diamond lens and other stories written by Fitz James O'Brien and published by . This book was released on 1932 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The diamond lens written by Fitz James O'Brien and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Diamond Lens and Other Strange Tales written by Fitz James O'Brien and published by Borgo Press. This book was released on 2002-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fitz-James O'Brien lived only 33 years -- from 1828 till 1862 -- but in his brief life he left a mark that endures today. O'Brien endures because he was a remarkable writer. Remarkable indeed He had a way of blending of hard fact with almost-fanciful fantasy, juxtaposing technology and mysticism, creating convincing and scientific settings that play against the otherworldly romance. For all the weird fancifulness -- these days O'Brien is read mostly as a successor to Poe -- his work has qualities we now associate with science fiction: O'Brien clearly researched the field of microscopy before he wrote _The Diamond Lens_; it reads in places like hard SF.
Download or read book The Diamond Lens written by Fitz-James O'Brien and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015-10-31 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Diamond LensBy Fitz-James O'Brien
Download or read book Diamond Lens Other Stories written by Fitz-James O'Brien and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Diamond Lens Illustrated written by Fitz James O'Brien and published by . This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fitz-James O'Brien (1828-1862) was an author and is often considered one of the forerunners of today's science fiction. While he was in college he had shown an aptitude for writing verse, and two of his poems-"Loch Ine" and "Irish Castles"-were published in The Ballads of Ireland (1856). His earliest writings in the United States were contributed to The Lantern. Subsequently he wrote for The Home Journal, The New York Times, and The American Whig Review. His first important literary connection was with Harper's Magazine, and beginning in February 1853 with The Two Skulls, he contributed more than sixty articles in prose and verse to that periodical. He likewise wrote for the New York Saturday Press and The Atlantic Monthly. To the latter he sent "The Diamond Lens" (1858) and "The Wondersmith" (1859), which are unsurpassed as creations of the imagination, and are unique among short magazine stories.
Download or read book The Diamond Lens written by Fitz James O'brien and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2012-02-18 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FROM a very early period of my life the entire bent of my inclinations had been toward microscopic investigations. When I was not more than ten years old, a distant relative of our family, hoping to astonish my inexperience, constructed a simple microscope for me by drilling in a disk of copper a small hole in which a drop of pure water was sustained by capillary attraction. This very primitive apparatus, magnifying some fifty diameters, presented, it is true, only indistinct and imperfect forms, but still sufficiently wonderful to work up my imagination to a preternatural state of excitement. Seeing me so interested in this rude instrument, my cousin explained to me all that he knew about the principles of the microscope, related to me a few of the wonders which had been accomplished through its agency, and ended by promising to send me one regularly constructed, immediately on his return to the city. I counted the days, the hours, the minutes that intervened between that promise and his departure.
Download or read book The Diamond Lens Large Print written by Fitz James O'Brien and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-03-04 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This story, published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1858, was the first of the great weird-scientific stories. It won immediate popularity for the author-a popularity which continued unbroken until his death in the Civil War.
