Mackintosh watched as the last grains of red marble sand slipped through the two-foot-high hourglass by the binnacle and then he mechanically flipped it over.
The best timekeeping device available was the hourglass or "sandglass," invented somewhere in the western Mediterranean in the eleventh or twelfth century.
Hawksworth laid these aside and took out a silver-trimmed brace of pistols, a gold- handled sword, an hourglass in carved ivory, and finally a gold whistle studded with small diamonds.
At night, the sand in the hourglass has run through twelve times.
His mother said, "An hourglass is made in the shape of the figure 8.
Beside the ordinary clock dial you will see a moving figure that strikes with its scepter the first note of each quarter hour, while at the same time a figure opposite it turns an hourglass to mark the complete passing of the hour.
Up close, the sides will be seen to be distinctly marked with an hourglass or crisscross pattern of tan or yellowish tan.
The highly distinctive crisscross or hourglass pattern of tan or yellowish tan on the sides is clearly visible.
One Sabbath Day, when the elder's sermon was so long that the hourglasshad been turned three times by the tithingman, and the sand was already running well for the fourth time, I believed of a truth that my feet were really frozen.
On the pulpit stood an hourglass in a frame of brass.
The sermons were long, the hourglass was sometimes twice turned during the service, and the children often kept themselves awake by looking out for the tithingman, who was watching out for them.
The bony skeleton is pointing out the bargain with his dart; but Time's hourglass is standing unperceived at Napoleon's side and the sand is running forth.
The figure of Father Time has winged his way to reckon with the usurper; his hourglass is held aloft, and with a golden extinguisher Time is about to snuff Boney out.
Death is politely handing forth his hourglass like a goblet, wherein to pledge his host, and enjoying a cruel pleasantry at the expense of the master of the house.
The grim King is enjoying himself in his own fashion, dancing his rattling bones right merrily to his own music, which he is congenially piping forth in a cemetery; while the fatal hourglass and dart are laid aside upon the slab of a grave.
All refused to answer her inquiries, but one of them, with a sinister smile, placed the hourglassand skull beside her.
She recollected also, and with increased uneasiness, that the man who had set the hourglass on the table, and who had regarded her with a sinister smile as he did so, had said it was eleven o'clock!
Single line with hourglass figures] Returning to the single encircling band, it is found, in figure 285, broken up into alternating equilateral triangles, each pair united at their right angles.
We can say that the bottom of this potassium-40 hourglass has been stuffed with so much sand from the very beginning that the few grains that fall through the waist are lost in the overall mass.
In other words, the ¹⁴C cycle is like an hourglass in which the sand in the upper part is replenished as fast as it runs out through the hole in the waist.
There is another fundamental requirement: At the beginning, the bottom part of the hourglass must be empty.
In effect it now starts measuring time as an hourglass should.
To state it in terms of our analogy, the hourglass must be in perfect working order—no leaks or cracks permitted.
Nuclear clocks run at logarithmically decreasing rates, but the speed of a good hourglass is roughly constant.
Illustration: To illustrate secular equilibrium, one must imagine an hourglass in which the sand in the top bulb is continuously replenished—as fast as it runs out through the hole in the waist and disappears.
On the wall below the clock sat a queer little bronze man holding an hourglass in his hand.
When the clock in the top of the tower stopped striking, the procession stopped marching, and the old man turned his hourglass upside down.
Hastily discarding her Charan's dress she put on the poppy-petalled red skirt and veil of the mad singer, so catching up her hourglass drum passed into the street.
I sketched the core of the pattern: an hourglass figure (meeting angles) with double lines from the corners.
It seems to refer to paired crossing lines as part of hourglass figures.
Where the outermost of these enclosing lines intersect, two of the four angles are solidified, producing secondary hourglass figures.
The hourglass figure can of course be construed as the "filled-in angle" enlarged.
