loadstone

• “Thus, the power of drawing iron is one of the ideas of the complex one of that substance we call a loadstone; and a power to be so drawn is a part of the complex one we call iron: which powers pass for inherent qualities in those subjects.”

  An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

• “Certain bodies -- as, for instance, the iron ore called loadstone, the earth itself, and pieces of steel which have been subjected to certain treatment -- are found to possess the following properties, and are called magnets.”

  The World's Greatest Books — Volume 15 — Science

• “To-morrow we shall arrive at a mountain of black stone, called loadstone: the current is now bearing us violently toward it, and the ships will fall in pieces, and every nail in them will fly to the mountain, and adhere to it; for God hath given to the loadstone a secret property by virtue of which everything of iron is attracted toward it.”

  The Arabian Nights Their Best-known Tales

• “To-morrow, by the end of the day, we shall come to a mountain of black stone, called loadstone, for thither the currents bear us perforce.”

  The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Volume I

• “The ancient Egyptians called the loadstone the bone of Haroeri, and iron the bone of Typhon.”

  Atlantis : the antediluvian world

• “In the card is a long steel needle, and the point of it is rubbed with a stuff called loadstone, and it takes the card round and round, and always points to the north.”

  Taking Tales Instructive and Entertaining Reading

• “You must know that some few hundred years ago, people discovered that a mineral called the loadstone, found in iron mines, had the quality of always pointing to the North, and they found, too, that any iron rubbed with it would possess the same quality.”

  The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; the Boy and the Book; and Crystal Palace

• “O my lord, he replied, know that we have wandered from our course since the commencement of the contrary wind that was followed in the morning by a calm, in consequence of which we remained stationary two days; from that period we have deviated from our course for twenty-one days, and we have no wind to carry us back from the fate which awaits us after this day: to-morrow we shall arrive at a mountain of black stone, called loadstone: the current is now bearing us violently towards it, and the ships will fall in pieces, and every nail in them will fly to the mountain, and adhere to it; for God hath given to the loadstone a secret property by virtue of which everything of iron is attracted toward it.”

  Nights 9-18. The Story of the Third Royal Mendicant.

• “They lit their pipes, put a specimen of the coal on the table, and made it a kind of loadstone of thought and conversation.”

  The Gilded Age A tale of today

• “loadstone" (magnetic iron ore) seems first to have been found.”

  Steam, Steel and Electricity

Show 10 more examples...