piston

• I suppose that in a steam engine the smallest rivet is quite as essential as the huge piston, and that if the rivet drops out the piston-rod is very likely to stop rising and falling. —  Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John
• Its shape indicates a valve action like that of the valve in a syringe-piston, and if we examine the two extremes of these conditions of glans--one devoid of corona, as many are, and the other with the corona in its most pronounced form, when in a state of erection--the difference, either in the appearance of the two organs or in the different philosophical action and results that must necessarily follow the use of these two differently shaped glans, will at once be apparent. —  History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance
• He says, "the distance traveled by the piston is the versed sine of an angle formed by a line from the center of the crank pin, in any part of its stroke to the center of the circle described by the crank pin, leaving out of the calculation the angular vibration of the connecting rod." —  Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 A Weekly Journal of Practical Information, Art, Science, Mechanics, Chemistry, and Manufactures.
• In this engine the proportion of the charging stroke to the whole sweep of the piston was about 10 per cent. —  Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885
• For a steam-engine may be defined as an apparatus for doing work by means of heat applied to water; and since raising such a weight as the piston is a form of doing work, this apparatus, clumsy and inconvenient though it may be answers the definition precisely. —  The Art of Public Speaking

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