A few years later the Naval Academy was founded at Annapolis, and a similar course was pursued to provide it with a corps of instructors.

My first undertaking in the way of scientific experiment was in the field of economics and psychology.

Though born in Nova Scotia, I am of almost pure New England descent.

I finally reached the conclusion that mathematics was the study I was best fitted to follow, though I did not clearly see in what way I should turn the subject to account.

Whenever a total eclipse of the sun was visible in an accessible region parties were sent out to observe it.

I had not yet gotten into the world of light. But I felt as one who, standing outside, could knock against the wall and hear an answering knock from within.

The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which men shall fly along distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration to be.