Word Finder - speculum

definition

A medical instrument used during an examination to dilate an orifice.

definition

A mirror, especially one used in a telescope.

definition

A bright, lustrous patch of colour found on the wings of ducks and some other birds, usually situated on the distal portions of the secondary quills, and much more brilliant in the adult male than in the female.

definition

A lookout place.

Glass is lighter, stiffer, less costly and easier to work than speculum metal.

The use of the convex lens, which is given as a great secret, in place of the concave speculum of the first edition, is not so clearly described as by Barbaro; the addition of the concave speculum is proposed for making the images larger and clearer, and also for making them erect, but no details are given.

Sabatier's theory as to the nature of these documents was, in brief, that the Speculum perfectionis was the first of all the Lives of the saint, written in 1227 by Br.

Leo; on the other hand, Thomas of Celano's two Lives are free from the "tendencies" ascribed to them by Sabatier, and that of 1248 was written with the collaboration of Leo and the other companions; thus the best sources of information are those portions of the Speculum that can with certainty be carried back to Br.

Rutherfurd introduced into common use the reflection grating, finding that speculum metal was less trying than glass to the diamond point, upon the permanence of which so much depends.

It is notable that an important instrument of research, the speculum, which has been reinvented in modern times, was used by Soranus; and specimens of still earlier date, showing great mechanical perfection, have been found among the ruins of Pompeii.

The sun shining, he fixed a round glass speculum (orbem e vitro) in a window-shutter, and then closing it the images of outside objects would be seen transmitted through the aperture on to the opposite wall, or better, a white paper screen suitably placed.

He discloses as a great secret the use of a concave speculum in front of the aperture, to collect the rays passing through it, when the images will be seen reversed, but by prolonging them beyond the centre they would be seen larger and unreversed.

He describes some entertaining peep-show arrangements, possibly similar to Alberti's, and indicates how the dark chamber with a concave speculum can be used for observing eclipses.

The Speculum Majus, the great compendium of all the knowledge of the middle ages, as it left the pen of Vincent, seems to have consisted of three parts only, viz.

All the printed editions, however, consist of four parts, the additional one being entitled Speculum Morale.

The Speculum Naturale fills a bulky folio volume of 848 closely printed double-columned pages.

The Speculum Naturale is so constructed that the various subjects are dealt with according to the order of their creation; it is in fact a gigantic commentary on Genesis i.

The Speculum Doctrinale, in seventeen books and 2374 chapters, is a summary of all the scholastic knowledge of the age and does not confine itself to natural history.

As the fifteenth book of the Speculum Doctrinale is a summary of the Speculum Naturale, so the Speculum Historiale may be regarded as the expansion of the last book of the same work.

One remarkable feature of the Speculum Historiale is Vincent's constant habit of devoting several chapters to selections from the writings of each great author, whether secular or profane, as he mentions him in the course of his work.

One main fault of the Speculum Historiale is the unduly large space devoted to miracles.

The so-called first edition of the Speculum Majus, including the Speculum Morale, ascribed to Johann Mentelin and long celebrated as the earliest work printed at Strassburg, has lately been challenged as being only an earlier edition of Vincent's three genuine Specula (c. 1468-70), with which has been bound up the Speculum Morale first printed by Mentelin (c. 1 473-7 6).

With few exceptions all the known events of Defoe's life are connected with authorship. In the older catalogues of his works two pamphlets, Speculum Crapegownorum, a satire on the clergy, and A Treatise against the Turks, are attributed to him before the accession of James II., but there seems to be no publication of his which is certainly genuine before The Character of Dr Annesley (1697).

Before it was a marvellous mirror erected on a many-storeyed pedestal (described in detail); in this speculum he could discern everything that went on throughout his dominions, and detect conspiracies.

His speculum metal is composed of four atoms of copper (126.4 parts) and one of tin (58.9 parts), a brilliant alloy, which resists tarnish better than any other compound tried.

In Brewster's Edinburgh Journal of Science for 1828 he described his machine for polishing the speculum, which in all essential points remained unaltered afterwards.

It imitates the motions made in polishing a speculum by hand by giving both a rectilinear and a lateral motion to the polisher, while the speculum revolves slowly; by shifting two eccentric pins the course of the polisher can be varied at will from a straight line to an ellipse of very small eccentricity, and a true parabolic figure can thus be obtained.

The speculum lies face upwards in a shallow bath of water (to preserve a uniform temperature), and the polisher fits loosely in a ring, so that the rotation of the speculum makes it revolve also, but more slowly.

In September 1839 a 3-foot speculum was finished and mounted on an altazimuth stand similar to Herschel's; but, though the definition of the images was good (except that the diffraction at the joints of the speculum caused minute rays in the case of a very bright star), and its peculiar skeleton form allowed the speculum to follow atmospheric changes of temperature very quickly, Lord Rosse decided to cast a solid 3-foot speculum.

By forming the bottom of the mould of hoop iron placed on edge and closely packed, and the sides of sand, while the top was left open, Lord Rosse overcame this difficulty, and the hoop iron had the further advantage of allowing the gas developed during the cooling to escape, thus preventing the speculum from being full of pores and cavities.

In the New English Dictionary the earliest example of the word " classical " is the phrase " classical and canonical," found in the Europae Speculum of Sir Edwin Sandys (1599), and, as applied to a writer, it is explained as meaning " of the first rank or authority."

After him Kaikobad, son of his brother Faramarz, entered Konia as sultan in 1298, but his reign is so obscure that nothing can be said of it; some authors assert that he governed only ' See the details in Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale, bk.

Dee's Speculum or mirror, a piece of solid pink-tinted glass about the size of an orange, is preserved in the British Museum.

Foucault invented in 1857 the polarizer which bears his name, and in the succeeding year devised a method of giving to the speculum of reflecting telescopes the form of a spheroid or a paraboloid of revolution.

No further practical advance appears to have been made in the design or construction of the instrument till the year 1723, when John Hadley (best known as the inventor of the sextant) presented to the Royal Society a reflecting telescope of the Newtonian construction, with a metallic speculum of 6-in.

The practical difficulty of constructing Gregorian telescopes of good defining quality is very considerable, because if spherical mirrors are employed their aberrations tend to increase each other, and it is extremely difficult to give a true elliptic figure to the necessarily deep concavity of the small speculum.

Such speculum metal is exceedingly hard and brittle, takes a fine white polish, and when protected from damp has little liability to tarnish.

The best speculum metal and the greatest care are no guarantee of freedom from tarnish, and, if such a mirror is much exposed, as it must be in the hands of an active observer, frequent repolishing will probably be necessary.

Every time, therefore, that a speculum is repolished, the future quality of the instrument is at stake; its focal length will probably be altered, and thus the value of the constants of the micrometer also have to be redetermined.

Silvered mirrors have also some advantage in light grasp over those of speculum metal, though, aperture for aperture, the former are inferior to the modern object-glass.

He died on the 19th of May 1904, after a short illness, leaving in manuscript a criticism on the sources of the [[Speculum]] historiale of Vincent de Beauvais.

The Speculum Regale, with its interesting geographical and social information, is also Norse, written c. 1240, by a Halogalander.

It was of what is still called " Newtonian " design, and had a speculum 2 in.

It may, however, be mentioned that Giraldus Cambrensis and the Speculum Regale state in all seriousness that certain of the inhabitants of Ossory were able at will to assume the form of wolves, and similar stories are not infrequent in Irish romance.

In speculum metal there are 2 to 21 parts of copper to 1 of tin.

His only known extant work is Speculum Historiale de Gestis Regum Angliae, 447-1066.

The value of the Speculum as a contribution to our historical knowledge is but slight, for it is mainly a compilation from other writers; while even in transscribing these the compiler is guilty of great carelessness.

Besides the Speculum Richard also wrote, according to the statement of William of Woodford in his Answer to Wycliffe (Edward Brown, Fasciculus Rerum expetendarum, p. 193), a treatise De Officiis; and there was formerly in the cathedral library at Peterborough another tractate from his pen, entitled Super Symbolum.

The Speculum affords the most conclusive proof of the spuriousness of another work attributed to Richard and long accepted by the learned world as his.

All doubt on the subject may, however, be held to have been effectually set at rest by the masterly exposure of the whole fraud drawn up by Professor Mayor in the preface to the edition above referred to of the Speculum.

To take the smear, the doctor or nurse puts an instrument called a speculum inside your vagina.

The test is usually carried out by a nurse who uses a speculum to open your vagina so that your cervix is accessible.

The doctor will put a speculum into your vagina to hold it open.

Both sexes have a dark green speculum which is slightly less prominent than that of most dabbling duck.