Ton-mile

“ If the diameter of the sun were to shrink by one mile all round, this would mean that all the millions of tons in the [Pg 27] outer one-mile thickness would have a straight drop of one mile towards the centre. ”

“ Six miles, when every bend, every mile, may be the last. Turning and twisting between piles of rocks, running down like precipices to the water’s side, from which one could feel the drops of water as they splashed over our little craft, or when a great wave struck it and threw a volume of water into our laps. We felt almost inclined to shriek at the speed with which we were flying those rapids. ”

“ How the general principle of a sliding scale, under which the charge per ton per mile decreases with distance over twenty miles, works out in practice may be shown by taking the case of merchandise in Class 5, the rate for which would be 4.30d. per ton per mile for a distance of up to twenty miles. ”

“ The chief significance of so small a change in so long a period is, really, to indicate that the ton-mile unit, so far from being of rapidly changing character, is actually, at least as far as it might be assumed to be affected by changes in the location of traffic movement, a fairly stable unit and thus an excellent measure of the rise or fall in rates. ”

“ Mile after mile the traveller looks in vain for the smoke of one hut, for one human form wrapped in plaid, and listens in vain for the bark of a shepherd's dog or the bleat of a lamb. Mile after mile the only sound that indicates life is the faint cry of a bird of prey from some stormbeaten pinnacle of rock. ”

“ You will hear a delicate young man, who has just returned from a pedestrian tour, boast of having walked his "two thousand miles," just as if he had trailed a pedometer behind him, and had measured every inch of the road. Panoramas also, have a very elastic method of stretching out a mile, which cab-drivers would doubtlessly not object to adopt as their own particular standard of measurement. They talk very glibly of being "three miles long," whereas, if the distance came to be measured, it would probably turn out to be—like cabmen's distances generally—not more than half. ”

“ Sometimes the rate of inclination is expressed by stating the number of feet of rise or fall in a mile. In this way a gradient would be described as falling at the rate of 30 feet in a mile, rising at the rate of 20 feet in a mile, etc. Twenty feet to a mile is equal to 1 in 264. ”

“ Whether the road be one mile or one hundred miles in length, the effect of diurnal rotation is the same; and, whether the road be long or short, the tendency to run off, as you cross a given parallel at a stated rate of speed, is the same; for the tendency to fly off the track is in proportion to the speed of the train, and not at all in proportion to the length of the road. ”

“ For long distances the units in the yard and metrical systems are respectively the mile and the kilomètre.
The mile has a definite meaning in our minds, being associated, from the days of youth, with the measured distances in race-courses, speed in walking, railway and steamer travel, length of surveyed lots—the same being in use among about 100,000,000 people.
For mechanical structures, the units are respectively the foot and the mètre. ”

“ Mile after mile might one sit when roads were good, careful only to keep the pace at twelve miles an hour; by no means to alter the pull on the reins lest they should translate it into an order for full speed. With heads held high at the same angle, with legs rising from the ground at the same second of time, alike their extravagant action, their eager courage. ”

“ Five thousand five hundred—"
"Are you squatting there and trying to tell me that this lake is over a mile deep!"
"Look for yourself!" he said in an unsteady voice. "Here is the tape! You can read, can't you? Six thousand feet—and running evenly. Six thousand five hundred!... Seven thousand! Seven thousand five—"
"It can't be!" I protested.
But it was true. Astounded, I continued to adjust the hydroscope to a range incredible, turning the screw to focus at a mile and a half, at two miles, at two and a quarter, a half, three-quarters, three miles, three miles and a quarter—click! ”

“ A mile stood on end ceases to be a mile and becomes a nightmare. Trail miles, or those that stretch across the mountain tops, are not even related to the miles of straight, smooth highway of the lower levels. ”

“ New England gives honest measure on the finger-posts along her highways. The traveller learns by well-earned experience the length of her [227] miles; but in the wilderness of the south there is no standard of five thousand two hundred and eighty feet to a statute mile, and the watermen along the sea-coast are ignorant of the fact that one-sixtieth of a degree of latitude (about six thousand and eighty feet) is the geographical and nautical mile of the cartographer, as well as the "knot" of the sailor. ”

“ The hauling power of a locomotive is [149] measured not by revenue ton miles, but by ton miles of gross weight, it making little difference to the locomotive as to what this gross ton mileage is composed of, the gross tonnage and the speed at which it must be moved being the factors that consume the energy of the locomotive.
A computation has been made of ton mileage on each individual mail route by multiplying weight carried by length of route; to the sum of these we add the dead weight of cars. ”

“ If we have never become acquainted with a mile by actually walking a mile, running a mile, riding a bicycle a mile, driving a horse a mile, or traveling a mile on a train, we might listen for a long time to someone tell how far a mile is, or state the distance from Chicago to Denver, without knowing much about it in any way except word definitions. ”

“ In France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and Belgium, they are in kilometres; in Russia, in versts, and in Germany in German miles. The kilometer is five-eighths of an English mile, and the verst very nearly the same; the German long mile equals five and three-fourths English miles, and the German short mile is about three and a half English. The rapid spread of the metric system of weights and measures will probably make the kilometer the unit of all railway distances on the Continent in the next decade. ”

“ We shall fix the position of that spot by applying two factors, the distance that you traveled and the direction in which you were moving. The direction is given by the compass; and, as the horse seems to have kept up a remarkably even pace, we can take time as representing distance. You seem to have been traveling at about eight miles an hour, that is, roughly, a seventh of a mile in one minute. So if, on our chart, we take one inch as representing one minute, we shall be working with a scale of about seven inches to the mile. ”

“ Each of the sixteen cars will have but one eighth of a mile to go. At the uniform rate we have adopted, the two miles can be done in seven and a half instead of fifteen seconds. With thirty-two cars, and a sixteenth of a mile, or twenty rods difference in their length, we arrive at the speed of a mile in less than two seconds; with sixty-four cars, each traveling but ten rods, a mile under the second. More than sixty miles a minute! If this isn’t rapid enough for the professor, tell him to go on increasing the number of his cars and diminishing the distance each one has to run. ”

“ In order to understand how impossible our present transport system would have been under the old régime, we must assume that a horse is capable, under ordinary circumstances, of carrying one ton about ten miles a day. Working for 300 days a year, therefore, he would be able to carry a total weight of about 3000 tons one mile in the course of twelve months. ”

“ The direction indicated by the instrument stationed at the beginning of a mile is in the plane of the prime vertical passing through that point, and that direction was continued through the mile by means of fore and back sights. At the end of the mile, an offset north was made to compensate for the sphericity of the earth. ”

“ Taking my departure from the tenth encampment on May 8, 1862, and sledging 176 miles (nautical) , now, on my return to same place, my 'dead reckoning'—which has been kept independent of all the astronomical observations taken during the trip—makes the same place differ in latitude 283/100 miles, and in longitude less than half a geographical mile, an approximation I little expected to make. ”

“ On British charts the nautical mile scale is divided into tenths (that is, cables of 100 fathoms or 600 feet length) ; on the American charts into quarters and eighths. Where the scale covers more than one mile the fractional divisions are shown only for the left-hand mile and the zero of the scale is placed between this and the full mile scale, so that with dividers the full miles and fraction may readily be taken off. The nautical mile in the United States is taken to be the length of a minute of arc of a great circle on a sphere whose surface equals that of the earth ”

“ The land on our right was low and marshy for three or four miles, when it rose into a range of heights that extended to the mountains. We proceeded East-South-East a mile and a half, South-East by East one mile, East by South three quarters of a mile, South-East by East one mile, East by South half a mile, North-East by East one mile, South-East half a mile, East-North-East a mile and a quarter, South-South-East half a mile, North-North-East a mile and a half: here a river flowed in from the left, which was about one-fourth part as large as that which received its tributary waters. ”

“ But, finally, the proper situation was discovered, and after the title had been searched — whether for smuggled goods or concealed weapons I have not the most remote idea — I found myself in a position to become proprietor of three acres of land, of which, to my thinking, the most dazzling attraction was the fact that the nearest neighbour was a mile away. However, I may make a note, in passing, of a paradox which I was very shortly to discover. It is this. A mile is the most elastic measurement in existence. ”

“ A person travelling may ascertain his rate of walking by the aid of a slight string with a piece of lead at one end, and the use of a seconds watch; the string being knotted at distances of 44 feet, the 120th part of an English mile, and bearing the same proportion to a mile that half a minute bears to an hour. If the traveller, when going at his usual rate, drops the lead, and suffers the string to slip through his hand, the number of knots which pass in half a minute indicate the number of miles he walks in an hour. ”

“ It is sufficient to indicate the impressiveness of their dimensions to repeat that the mountains rise abruptly from the waters of the Sound to a height of a mile or a mile and a half; that the sailing passage between them is not more, in some places, than a quarter of a mile in breadth; and that in the waters below no bottom has been found at 200 fathoms deep. ”

“ In fact, for every 7 feet in a mile which an acclivity rises, 3 pounds per ton will be added to the force of traction. If we would then ascertain the power necessary to pull a load up any given acclivity upon a railroad, we must first take 7-1/2 pounds as the force necessary to overcome the common resistance of the road, and then add 3 pounds for every 7 feet which the acclivity rises per mile. ”

“ The short English miles are delightful for walking. You are always pleased to find, every now and then, in how short a time you have walked a mile, though, no doubt, a mile is everywhere a mile, I walk but a moderate pace, and can accomplish four English miles in an hour. It used to take me pretty nearly the same time for one German mile. Now it is a pleasing exchange to find that in two hours I can walk eight miles. ”

“ Thus, if it ascend 17 feet in a mile, the destruction of vital air will be twice as great as on a level; if it ascend 34 feet in a mile, it will be three times as great; 51 feet in a mile, four times as great, and so on. ”

“ Our forefathers thought fifteen miles an hour terrific; and one of the objections to Stephenson’s ideas was, that at such a speed, not to mention a twenty-or twenty-five-mile rate, no human being could draw breath. ”

“ The mile of the guide-board was an elastic one, and sometimes a weary one.
Guide-boards, even poor ones, are still most welcome. No one in the country ever has any correct estimate of distances; a distance “a little better than three miles” before you usually increases by an extraordinary law instead of decreases after you have driven nearly a mile to “about four mile.” The next road-jogger says “nigh on to a mile”; and then you may be sure a few hundred feet farther on to jump back to a slow and wise rejoinder of the original distance, “hard on to four mile.”
[Pg 355]
The Watering Trough. ”

“ Now the resistance on a level being at a velocity of twenty miles per hour, 10.3 lbs. per ton by the formula
1
a = R
W, the vertical height in feet causing a double expenditure of power is twenty-four; but as above, the whole expense of a double power is increased by only twenty-five per cent.; we should not add one mile for twenty-four feet rise, but one fourth of a mile only, or one mile for each ninety-six feet ”

“ Thus the crow-line of 375 miles is developed into 4891⁄2 miles for caravan traffic, so as to enable mules and human beings to clamber over the mountain-passes between the two places. To any competent engineer who studied the maps, it would be evident that the length of a railway with a ruling gradient of 100 feet to a mile, carried from Bhamo to Yunnan-fu, would be at least 967 miles. ”

“ Supposing that through a channel one mile wide there flows one mile in length of water; where the river is five miles wide each of the 5 square miles will require 1/5 of itself to be equal to the square mile of water required in the sea, and where the river is 3 miles wide each of these square miles will require the third of its volume to make up the amount of the square mile of the narrow part ”