#pa

The construction of extensive railways, however, and particularly the consolidation of small, experimental lines into large systems, dates from the days of the discovery of gold in California. ↗

— John Moody

#consolidation #construction #dates #days #discovery

The nation did not begin to realize the extraordinary possibilities of the vast Western territory until its attention was thus suddenly and definitely concentrated on the Pacific by the annual addition of over fifty million dollars to the circulating medium. ↗

— John Moody

#annual #attention #begin #circulating #concentrated

The public conviction that a railroad linking the West and the East was an absolute necessity became so pronounced after the gold discoveries of '49 that Congress passed an act in 1853 providing for a survey of several lines from the Mississippi to the Pacific. ↗

— John Moody

#absolute necessity #act #after #became #congress

The process of composition, messing around with paragraphs and trying to make really good prose, is hardwired into my personality. ↗

— Rick Moody

#composition #good #good prose #into #make

The United States as we know it today is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad. ↗

— John Moody

#inventions #know #largely #machinery #mechanical

While no one railroad can completely duplicate another line, two or more may compete at particular points. ↗

— John Moody

#compete #completely #duplicate #line #may

Yet, in 1850 nearly all the railroads in the United States lay east of the Mississippi River, and all of them, even when they were physically mere extensions of one another, were separately owned and separately managed. ↗

— John Moody

#east #even #extensions #lay #managed

But that incessant drive to be out there in the literary universe that was important to me when I was in my twenties, like going to a Paris Review party or whatever, that seems totally irrelevant now. ↗

— Rick Moody

#going #i #important #incessant #irrelevant

My grandfather was a newspaper publisher and his paper had all the comics in NYC, so some of my earliest memories are of reading the family paper and heading straight for the comics insert. ↗

— Rick Moody

#earliest #earliest memories #family #grandfather #had

Leon Theremin's original designs are elegant, ingenious and effective. As electronics goes, the theremin is very simple. But there are so many subtleties hidden in the details of the design. It's like a great sonnet, or a painting, or a speech, that is perfectly done on more than one level. ↗

— Robert Moog

#designs #details #done #effective #electronics