mechanicaladj.n.

1600 W. Shakespeare Midsummer Night's Dream iii. ii. 9 A crew of patches, rude Mechanicals, That worke for bread, vpon Athenian stalles. View more context for this quotation

1603 P. Holland tr. Plutarch Morals 211 These covetous misers gather wealth together like mightie magnificoes, but they spend like beggerly mechanicals.

1647 W. Lilly Christian Astrol. clx. 676 It..expresseth in Mechanicals, great Custome and Trade; in men otherwise qualified, Preferment, Office.

1830 Westm. Rev. 13 211 Socrates! we hear all the vulgar mechanicals exclaim,..a poor, mean, pitiful, pennyless fellow!

1968 Listener 1 Feb. 148 Frivolity seems to me the only, precarious excuse for this novel—a let-out, for instance, for treating the income-earning group as characters and the rest as ‘mechanicals’.

1989 M. Pafford Kipling's Indian Fiction iii. 65 Mulvaney is..as much a ‘mechanical’ as Bottom or Dogberry.

1967 V. Strauss Printing Industry xi. 744/2 At its simplest, the mechanical is a piece of artists' illustration board, somewhat larger than the final size of the printed piece. To this board are attached, by cementing or pasting.., a number of line images, all in the same focus and, of course, of inspected quality. This board bears, furthermore, all notations that will enable it to serve as the blueprint of the job.

1967 Britannica Bk. of Year (U.S.) 66 Many regulations, particularly in relation to TV, prevented advertisers from using international campaigns if the basic mechanicals—artwork, films, and so on—were not produced in Italy by Italians.

1973 Publishers Weekly 12 Mar. 38 The layout [of an advertisement] was changed at the last minute, and the mechanical bearing [the publisher] Quadrangle's name either was not replaced, or it fell off.

1936 Fortune Oct. 127 The mechanical-minded or the habitual gadgeteer.

1947 J. Steinbeck Wayward Bus xvii. 223 I suppose people really think they are mechanical-minded.

1799 J. Dumbell (title) The commercial aqueduct, a plan for improving the Port of London; with..some remarks on the Panergicon, a chymical power capable of being used to great mechanical advantage in carrying this plan into effect.]

1852 J. L. Blake Farm & Fireside 267 The withers should be somewhat high in every horse..for there is larger surface for the attachment of the muscles of the back, and they act at greater mechanical advantage.

1894 W. J. Lineham Text-bk. Mech. Engin. ix. 481 The first is the principle of virtual velocities, and the second mechanical advantage.

1945 C. E. Balleisen Princ. Firearms v. 44 From this time on the mechanical advantage of the mechanism becomes more favorable and the bolt is withdrawn from the breech end of the barrel.

1997 New Scientist 25 Jan. (inside back cover) A bicycle is unusual among machines because it has a mechanical advantage (MA) of less than one—typically between one-third (in low gear) and one-eighth (in top gear).

1594 R. Ashley tr. L. le Roy Interchangeable Course sig. A3 Thorough the most renowmed Nations of the world, all liberall Sciences, and Mechanical Arts, haue flourished together.

1851 J. P. Kennedy (title) Address delivered before the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanical Arts, on the occasion of the opening of the Fourth Annual Exhibition, on the 21st October, 1851.

1998 Review (Rio Tinto plc) June 14/1 That great flowering of the mechanical and useful arts which transformed the world's production technology in the centuries to come.

1926 Antiques Mag. Oct. 291/1 (caption) Fig. 3—Two Mechanical Banks.

1985 B. Norman Bank Bk. 9 Old mechanical banks are considered to have been produced for approximately 70 years, from about 1869 to about 1940. Well over 400 different types were made in the U.S. and Europe... Today, the majority of the surviving old mechanical banks are contained in hundreds of collections throughout the world.

1811 C. Blunt (title) An essay on mechanical drawing.

1842 G. W. Francis Dict. Arts at Perspectograph An instrument for the mechanical drawing of objects in perspective.

1933 R. P. Hoelscher & A. B. Mays Basic Units Mech. Drawing I. i. 1 For mechanical drawing the 6H pencil should be used for preliminary layouts.

1980 F. E. Giesecke et al. Techn. Drawing vi. 183/2 It is suggested that the student..obtain his instructor's approval before starting the mechanical drawing.

1840 N. Amer. Rev. Oct. 427 In 1824, he was appointed mechanical engineer to the mines of Italpuzahui.

1945 C. E. Balleisen Princ. Firearms p. iii This book is neither a catalogue nor a historical register of automatic weapons... The treatment, rather, has been to select a limited number of familiar weapons and to analyse their operation from the viewpoint of a mechanical engineer.

1990 Birder's World Aug. 53/2 His father, a mechanical engineer, was constructing plywood factories and sawmills in several southern states.

1851 D. K. Clark (title) Railway machinery: a treatise on the mechanical engineering of railways; embracing the principles and construction of rolling and fixed plant, in all departments.

1910 Encycl. Brit. IX. 406/2 Perhaps the first branch to be recognized as separate was mechanical engineering, which is concerned with steam-engines, machine tools, mill-work and moving machinery in general.

1957 Technology Mar. 16/2 Mechanical engineering students at Hendon Technical College sandwich eight weeks of study with eight weeks of factory work.

1991 J. Rifkin Biosphere Politics iv. xxxii. 242 At the Japanese government's mechanical engineering laboratory, scientists are experimenting in a new field of operations called ‘tele-operations’.

1648 Bp. J. Wilkins Math. Magick i. iii Of the first Mechanical faculty, the Ballance.

1704 J. Harris Lexicon Technicum I. at Power The Six Mechanical Faculties.

1846 Sci. Amer. 14 Nov. 60/1 If..too low a welding heat is given under the hammer, a mechanical mixture of carbon and dross will remain in the iron.

c1874 Pop. Cycl. Nat. & Physical Sci. 777/2 It is important to distinguish clearly between a mere mechanical mixture and a chemical compound.

1961 J. N. Anderson Appl. Dental Materials (ed. 2) vi. 56 A eutectoid reaction. This involves the breakdown as a solid solution at a definite temperature to produce an intimate mechanical mixture of two solids.

1994 W. R. Newman Gehennical Fire iv. 141 As in modern chemistry, Van Helmont asserts that what we would today call a ‘mechanical mixture’, such as the juxtaposition of sand and grains of salt, is not a compound at all, but a ‘bare commingling’.

1923 Official Gaz. (U.S. Patent Office) 2 Jan. 18/1 Parker..Fountain Pens and Mechanical Pencils.

1995 N.Y. Times 26 Feb. i. 25/3 The medium-sized droplets in cold drizzle—no bigger than a lead refill for a mechanical pencil.

1876 (title) The mechanical printer (type-writer).

1890 Cent. Dict. at Printer Mechanical printer, a type-writer.

1911 Q. Jrnl. Econ. 25 651 Mechanical pulp is little else than ground wood, produced by the erosion of the spruce when held in contact with common grindstones.

1936 Economist 8 Feb. 304/1 Of sulphate as well as of mechanical pulp, both annual production and stocks have been sold out.

1963 R. R. A. Higham Handbk. Papermaking v. 129 Mechanical pulp is an important cheap grade used in the manufacture of papers such as newsprint, wallpaper, [etc.].

1991 Which? Feb. 92/2 Mechanical pulp is usually bleached with hydrogen peroxide.

1909 U.S. Copyright Act 4 Mar. in Copyright Law U.S. (Libr. of Congress) 4 As a condition of extending the copyright control to..mechanical reproductions.., whenever the owner of a musical copyright has used or permitted or knowingly acquiesced in the use of the copyrighted work upon the parts of instruments serving to reproduce mechanically the musical work, any other person may make similar use of the copyrighted work upon the payment to the copyright proprietor of a royalty of two cents on each such part manufactured.]

1915 J. M. Easton W. A. Copinger's Law of Copyright (ed. 5) iii. v. 259 Copyright may be infringed either..by making the record which is capable of mechanically reproducing the work of another, or..by using the record in such a manner as to cause the work to be performed in public. (marginal heading) Mechanical rights where the copyright has been assigned.

1958 F. E. S. James & E. P. S. James Copinger & Stone James' Law Copyright (ed. 9) xvii. 282 Mechanical rights were first conferred on owners of copyright by the Act of 1911.

1887 W. Hillhouse tr. E. Strasburger Handbk. Pract. Bot. 88 The system of mechanical tissue, the Stereome.

1920 Ecology 1 131 A significant transformation is obvious in the mechanical tissue which has developed areas of thick-walled fibers at the ends of the annual rings of growth.

1960 K. Esau Anat. Seed Plants 360 Supporting tissue. Refers to tissue composed of cells with more or less thickened walls, primary (collenchyma) or secondary (sclerenchyma), that adds strength to the plant body. Also called mechanical tissue.

1982 Jrnl. Ecol. 70 499 Flexing of the petioles caused by air turbulence..may increase the rate of formation of mechanical tissue.

1923 R. Glazebrook Dict. Appl. Physics V. 344/1 These internal stresses cause internal straining of the metal, which in turn causes the formation of numerous mechanical twins.

1966 McGraw-Hill Encycl. Sci. & Technol. (rev. ed.) VIII. 293/1 Typical phenomena observable are...effects of deformation—strain markings,..mechanical twins, and microcracks.

1913 Engineering 10 Oct. 510/3 There is now good reason to doubt that mechanical twinning ever occurs in metals.

1935 G. E. Doan Princ. Physical Metall. iii. 77 In mechanical twinning, each atom moves a certain distance relative to the neighboring plane.

1966 W. J. M. Tegart Elem. Mech. Metall. v. 121 Another important mode of deformation is that of mechanical twinning.

1926 Paper Terminol. (Spalding & Hodge) ii. 17 Mechanical wood, the lowest grade of wood pulp prepared by the purely mechanical process of grinding.

1937 E. J. Labarre Dict. Paper 119/1 Ground wood,..another term for mechanical wood.

1887 Harper's Mag. June 116/1 The mechanical wood-pulp is used chiefly for cheap news paper, and is very apt to prove rather a filling than a fibre.

1910 R. W. Sindall Paper Technol. (ed. 2) 240 Box boards,..manufactured from mechanical wood pulp, old waste papers, hemp, etc.

1963 R. R. A. Higham Handbk. Papermaking 135 The properties of mechanical wood pulp..are:..bulkiness, good sheet formation and printability.

1962 A. Nisbett Technique Sound Studio v. 94 A reversed-reading instrument is used: it has its mechanical zero at the right-hand end of the scale and is deflected back to the scale zero (its ‘electrical zero’) by a steady current.

1971 Gloss. Electrotechnical, Power, Terms (B.S.I.) i. iv. 9 Mechanical zero, equilibrium position which the index will approach when the measuring element..is de-energized.

1845 J. P. Joule in London, Edinb., & Dublin Philos. Mag. 26 375 The mechanical equivalent of heat derived from the foregoing experiments.

1860 J. Tyndall Glaciers of Alps ii. xix. 329 This force is the mechanical equivalent of the heat generated.

1933 A. W. Barton Text Bk. Heat ii. 46 The method of continuous flow calorimetry was first devised by Callendar and Barnes, who applied it to finding the mechanical equivalent of heat.

1983 SIAM Rev. 25 33 The thermodynamics is based squarely on the measured latent heat of steam and mechanical equivalent of heat, through the First Law of Thermodynamics.

1908 Proc. Royal Soc. 1907–8 A. 80 19 The labours of workers in Germany and in the United States [have not]..sufficed to permit of definite values being adopted for..the mechanical equivalent of light.

1908 Proc. Royal Soc. 1907–8 A. 80 22 The mechanical equivalent of light M = ^4πρ/ _I = ^Wr/ _Kf ^d/ _D², giving the mechanical equivalent in watts per candle.

1959 W. S. Sharps Dict. Cinematogr. 110/2 The reciprocal of the luminous efficiency of radiant energy is often termed, the ‘mechanical equivalent of light’.