Operator

“ To turn a line through a certain angle in a given plane, a certain operator is required; but when we wish to turn it through an equal negative angle we must not, in general, employ the negative of the former operator. ”

“ If it be your intention to remain in the Institution and to continue as operator, which probably might be carried on along with the School of Mechanics (though [Pg 174] of this I am not certain, as an operator’s time ought to be dedicated to natural philosophy) , I would do all in my power to instruct you properly; but to have the weight upon myself without the prospect of being relieved from it another year is what I dare scarce look at.
In deciding put everything out of the question but the good of the Institution, for unless you can promote that you cannot promote your own by its means. ”

“ At the outset, then, the hypothesis was that the subject responded merely because the operator contained more electricity and had the stronger will, and will-power itself seemed to be little more than magnetism, so-called. But as matter of fact the books simply told a person how to become an operator without explaining anything that he did: there was no science of the thing at all. ”

“ In the room more subject to outside influences, the conditions are so constantly changing that uniformity of practice never gives uniform results, and hence the operator is without guidance, either intelligent or blind, and the results are wholly a product of chance. ”

“ Various implements are employed by the expert operator in his quest for what lies hidden from mortal eyes; but the preferred agent is usually a bough of witch-hazel, branching at one end like the tines of a pitchfork.24 Taking firm hold of each prong, with the palms of the hands turned upward, the operator slowly walks around the locality where it is desired to find water ”

“ The operator finally records the scale interval that the operatee can just appreciate, as being the true measure of the coarseness (or the inverse measure of the delicacy) of the sensitivity of the operatee.
It is somewhat tedious to test many persons in succession, but any one can test his own powers at odd and end times with ease and nicety, if he happens to have ready access to suitable apparatus. ”

“ It therefore becomes a matter worthy of investigation, to ascertain what superior judgment and skill one operator possesses over another which enable him to work successfully a quality of plate, pronounced by the other entirely useless. ”

“ When a subject, who has good control over his mental and muscular movements, keeps the arm connected with the operator perfectly stiff, even though his mind be well concentrated on the hidden object, the operator cannot find either the direction or the locality. ”

“ A machine has, therefore, been contrived for measuring and registering the length of the goods as they pass rapidly through the hands of the operator, by which all chance of erroneous counting is avoided. ”

“ The operator, who holds the picture by the upper-end, where the inside of the frame is not gilt, to prevent its falling, feels nothing of the shock, and may touch the face of the picture without danger, which he pretends is a test of his loyalty.—If a ring of persons take the shock among them, the experiment is called, The Conspirators. ”

“ The experiment may be made as follows:—The percipient, being blindfolded, is seated at a table with his back to the operator, without contact and in perfect silence. A diagram—for instance, a circle with a cross in the centre—is distinctly drawn by a third person and so held as to be in full view of the operator, who looks at it in silence, steadily and with concentrated attention. ”

“ And, having the greatest number of chemical things to prepare, I could not have got through it with any credit to myself or satisfaction to the managers. You are better acquainted with the duty of an operator than you were before the commencement of the lectures, and can therefore form some judgment concerning the knowledge requisite and the labour which it requires. ”

“ Such an apparatus is operated, of course, by a motive power located beyond the limit of travel, and while the operation is at every stage subject to the control of an operator, a large proportion of the important functions are automatic, the positive movements of the parts through such operations being derived entirely from the bodily movement of the apparatus itself, while actuated by momentum, gravity or the direct action of the hoist rope. ”

“ The operator, a very intelligent man who had taken a sceptical attitude, was entirely converted to the truth of the photographs, for, as he pointed out, such an enlargement would show the least trace of a scissors irregularity or of any artificial detail, and would make it absurd to suppose that a dummy figure could remain undetected. ”

“ The operator feels also the sense of mastery that is in him, whereby he corrects the tree, removes the wayward parts, keeps and encourages all that is best. To engage in this kind of education requires that one approaches the work with due preparation of mind and I think also with consecration of heart. ”

“ When an operation is an abstraction of an existing operation for a new type or is a generalization of an existing operation, it is inconvenient, confusing and misleading to use any but the existing operator symbol or name. ”

“ The attention of those who believe that standardization makes machines out of the workers themselves, is called to the absence of such effect upon the typist as compared with the scribe, the monotype and linotype operator as compared with the compositor, and the mechanical computing machine operator as compared with the arithmetician. ”

“ A great portion of this employment consists more in the motion of the hands and the opportune glance of the eye, than in the labour of the head, and allows to the operator from time to time an interval of rest from the momentous efforts of invention and discovery, and the careful deduction of consequences in the points to be elucidated. ”

“ The operator is usually in a better position to know what to do than the onlookers, and while the suggestions of the latter are usually futile they may be endured for the occasional great help derived from them. ”

“ When a combination of numbers or of letters in a word is to be guessed, the operator passes over with the subject the several digits or the alphabet, and notes at which the tell-tale tremor or mark of excitement occurs, and so again performs the feat on the basis of the involuntary contractions that express the slight changes of attention or interest when the correct number or letter is indicated. ”

“ The operator must have complete control over the flame, and be able to change its size and character at short notice without giving the work a chance to cool, and often without ceasing to support it with both hands. ”

“ I cannot too strongly urge, that coolness and confidence on the part of the operator are essential qualification, for any thing approaching to hurry irritates them beyond measure; indeed whilst engaged with them the hand ought never - 29 - to be hastily removed from one position to another. ”

“ The person to be operated upon prepares his teeth for the purpose by chewing raw rice and turmeric, and, prostrating himself on the ground, lays his head, blindfolded, upon the operating-bench. The operator demonstratively repeats an unintelligible incantation phrase, and, wedging the subject's mouth open, performs his work. ”

“ The operator begins his work by pressing the large end of the horn against the part which is to be relieved, and, applying his mouth to the other end, he sucks vigorously until he has produced the required effect. ”

“ The articles they make are generally small and very rapidly produced, and the endless repetition of the same movements on the part of the operator is very tedious to watch, and must be infinitely more so to perform. ”

“ There an operator picks up a telephone receiver and listens for your description of the fire, and he decides, according to the message received, the number of pieces and character of the apparatus which is to answer the alarm. For example, if it is only a small fire—a window-curtain or a chimney—he simply orders out one piece of apparatus, an electric engine, such as was described above, or, perhaps, a fourgor—a sort of hose-wagon carrying a squad of men, short ladders, hose, and tools and appliances of all kinds. ”

“ The professional operator has, it is true, two advantages. He asserts emphatically that he ‘can hypnotise’; he advertises; and we tend to believe emphatic and repeated statements, however groundless they may really be ”

“ Your first position is that of a master mechanic, who is capable of drawing plans and writing minutely a specification whereby the engineer may know what a well constructed machine is in every particular. He knows the parts and relations of both as constructor and operator, and you are supposed to be the foreman in the shop of repairs. The living person is the engine, nature the engineer, and you the master mechanic. ”

“ The product of two operators is an operator which is equivalent to the successive operations of the factors. This multiplication is necessarily associative, and its definition is not really dififerent from that of the operators themselves. And here I may observe that Professor C. S. Peirce has shown that his father's associative algebras may be regarded as operational and matricular. [16]
Now the calculus of distributive operators is a subject of great extent and importance, but Grassmann's view is the more comprehensive, since it embraces the other with something besides. ”

“ An object requiring the particular care and attention of the operator is the proper focus. It is not unfrequently the complaint of sitters that their hands are represented as being magnified and greatly out of proportion with the general figure. ”

“ S. — When we are engaged in playing at draughts, the good player is our useful co-operator: when in laying bricks and stones, the skilful mason: much more than the just man. Can you specify in what particular transactions the just man has any superior usefulness as a co-operator? ”

“ A company’s operator might occasionally constitute himself a temporary agent for his company in his spare time after ordinary hours of duty, charging sixpence extra on each message, and this the companies rather encouraged than otherwise. ”

“ This depends largely on its convenience of manipulation, involving a study of levers, handles, wheels, knobs and other auxiliary devices, their shape and place with reference to the best adaptation to the average human frame, the ease and extent of their motions, and the rapidity with which these motions may be accomplished. The position of the operator, his natural tendencies, the motions he will go through, all have to be imagined in view of the attainment of his maximum convenience. ”

“ In truing surfaces with a file a great part of the operator’s time is occupied in testing the work for parallelism, and applying it to the surface plate to test its flatness or truth, whereas in a machine of this kind both the parallelism and the truth of the work are effected by the accurate guiding of the machine table in its guideways. Furthermore, a high order of skill is essential to the production of work by filing that shall equal for parallelism and truth work that is much more easily operated upon in the machine. ”

“ The operator may succeed in throwing you into the deep trance state, in which you may travel or become clairvoyant, but we would not recommend you to submit to mesmeric influence or hypnotic suggestions from anyone, unless you know that he is experienced and a thoroughly honorable and trustworthy individual. In circles for development one member is frequently impressed, or controlled to make magnetic passes 225over another to aid in his unfoldment ”

“ Crombie, pacing the lonely deck in the first gray of the fog-bound morning, still carried on his worn and haggard face the marks of a sleepless night. Yet at the roots of his shadowy, febrile mood of misery stirred some vague and subliminal sense of joy. It was something more than the tangible and material triumph of the operator—for he knew now that with care and watchfulness she would surely live—it was something that lay deeper than the mere knowledge of a stern and crucial task relentlessly and undeviatingly carried out. ”

“ Operators become so expert in reading by sound that they may lie down and sleep in the room, and, although the instrument is rattling away all the time, he does not hear it till his own call is made, when he immediately awakes. ”

“ Operators will therefore do well to make themselves masters of their business, rather than rest satisfied with a merely mechanical attention to prescribed methods, without an intelligent apprehension of their significance. ”

“ In this, and in all other instances, as was explained above, the particular numerical data and the numerical results are determined by means and by portions of the mechanism which act quite independently of those that regulate the operations. In studying the action of the Analytical Engine, we find that the peculiar and independent nature of the considerations which in all mathematical analysis belong to operations, as distinguished from the objects operated upon and from the results of the operations performed upon those objects, is very strikingly defined and separated. ”

“ The various parts of the machinery under consideration being once expressed upon paper by proper symbols, the enquirer dismisses altogether from his thoughts the mechanism itself, and attends only to the symbols; the management of which is so extremely simple and obvious, that the most unpractised person, having once acquired an acquaintance with the signs, cannot fail to comprehend their use.
A remarkable instance of the power and utility of this notation occurred in a certain stage of the invention of the calculating machinery. ”

“ These instructions represent the combined work of several men in the planning room, each of whom has his own specialty, or function. One of them, for instance, is a specialist on the proper speeds and cutting tools to be used. He uses the slide-rules which have been above described as an aid, to guide him in obtaining proper speeds, etc. Another man analyzes the best and quickest motions to be made by the workman in setting the work up in the machine and removing it, etc. ”