1883 E. Atkinson tr. A. Ganot Elem. Treat. Physics (ed. 11) x. vi. 850 As they are all connected together we get, not so much a series of separate impulses, as a continuous series of currents.

1904 Daily Chron. 10 Dec. 7/2 It [sc. a tape] is inserted in the aperture of the transmitting instrument, and by the perforations the electrical impulses are created and recorded at the receiving station.

1943 A. L. Albert Fund. Teleph. ix. 206 The vertical movement of the selector switch is controlled by the electric impulses received from the subscriber's dial.

1971 H. E. Ennes Television Broadcasting vii. 347 The circuit works by virtue of the fact that spurious noise impulses normally are much narrower than the desired sync pulses.

1923 H. R. Langman & A. Ball Electr. Horol. v. 82 Clocks coming under this section are generally..designated as dials, impulse clocks, secondary clocks, journeyman clocks, sympathetic clocks, or step by step movements.

1951 S. J. Wise Electr. Clocks (ed. 2) iv. 67 An impulse or repeater clock is a device which receives the timed electrical impulses transmitted by a master clock, and translates them, through its wheelwork, into seconds, minutes and hours.

1931 F. Hope-Jones Electr. Clocks ii. 6 Circuits of electrical impulse dials, in which a master clock transmits impulses every minute or half-minute to propel the hands.

1940 F. Hope-Jones Electr. Timekeeping i. 6 After many years of futile attempts to apply electricity to horology, inventors turned their attention to systems of electrical impulse dials, an obviously sane and effective method of indicating uniform time throughout a large building.

1943 A. P. Fraas Aircraft Power Plants viii. 147 To ensure a good spark at cranking speeds the magnetos for many of the smaller engines are fitted with an impulse coupling.

1929 T. M. Naylor Steam Turbines i. 4 Combination turbines or disc and drum turbines, as they are often called, are a combination of impulse and reaction types of turbine. The first part of the turbine is impulse, and the remainder of the turbine is reaction, so that this type of turbine might be called impulse-reaction.

1951 Engineering 5 Oct. 438/3 The high-pressure turbine is of the impulse-reaction type.

1916 V. W. Pagé Automobile Starting iii. 224 The device..is known as the Eisemann impulse starter coupling. This may be attached to any model of Eisemann magneto and is said to have no effect upon its regular operation except at slow speeds, when it causes the armature to rotate in a series of jumps instead of at a uniform speed.

1940 W. E. Crook Electr. in Aircraft vii. 93 The impulse starter..enables the engine to start on its own magnetos. It is a purely mechanical piece of apparatus, consisting essentially of a spring-loaded pawl and ratchet gear.

1877 Illustr. London News 14 Apr. 339/3 It is fired by what is called an ‘impulse-tube’, which..discharges the torpedo into the water.

1878 Cassell's Family Mag. 312/2 Direction is given to the torpedo by means of an iron impulse-tube built into the vessel.

1885 Marine Engineer Sept. 144/2 The fish torpedoes lie side by side. Immediately behind them..are a couple of ‘impulse tubes’.

1880 Encycl. Brit. XII. 532/2 The theory of the impulse turbine does not essentially differ from that of the reaction turbine.

1881 Encycl. Brit. XII. 524/1 In some turbines the whole available energy of the water is converted into kinetic energy before the water acts on the moving part of the turbine. Such turbines are termed Impulse Turbines, and they are distinguished by this that the wheel passages are never entirely filled by the water.

1906 W. H. S. Garnett Turbines iv. 42 Impulse turbines..are unsuited for the development of high speed motion from low falls... For running, on the other hand, at low speeds under a high fall, the impulse turbine cannot be surpassed.

1971 P. J. McMahon Aircraft Propulsion v. 163 The extreme case of a zero reaction stage wherein all the pressure drop occurs in the nozzle blades is known as an ‘impulse turbine’ in accordance with steam turbine practice. A pure impulse turbine would rarely be used for an aero~turbine engine.

1611 J. Florio Queen Anna's New World of Words Impulsare, to impulse, to perswade often.

1614 W. Raleigh Hist. World i. v. iii. §4. 40 With that force so impulsed and prest, they are carried vnder the deepe Ocean.

1658 T. Bromhall Treat. Specters i. 102 The Man being impulsed by some invisible spirit.

1689 T. Plunket Char. Good Commander 45 The Earth's fill'd with fraud and violence, Impulsed by the Jesuits influence.

a1711 T. Ken Hymns for Festivals in Wks. (1721) I. 307 Love to the Cross his Soul impuls'd.

a1718 W. Penn Tracts in Wks. (1726) I. 548 His Good Angel or Spirit..very often impuls'd or moved him to preach to the People.

1757 R. Griffith & E. Griffith Lett. Henry & Frances II. ccxxxvii. 171 The Centrifugal [power]..is a Force impulsed upon all the Planets, at their Creation, that directs them forward, in a right Line.

1931 Times 27 June 11/5 The interference is due..to..sparks in stays of masts, and to loose metallic contacts, which impulse the receiver in the same way as heavy atmospherics would do.

1936 Nature 12 Sept. 445/2 The law and governmental forms..clearly lag behind even economic developments as impulsed by scientific discovery.

1943 Gloss. Terms Telecomm. (B.S.I.) 62 Impulsing signal, a signal carrying the selective information to steer the call in the desired direction.

1949 E. C. Berkeley Giant Brains iii. 41 This type of relay has the property of staying..in either position until the opposite coil is impulsed.

1960 Lang. & Speech III. 140 (title) Recurrently impulsed resonators in speech and psycho~physical studies.

1972 ‘J. Quartermain’ Rock of Diamond xiii. 72 Her small voice..impulsed through the network of cables.

1885 L. Oliphant Sympneumata xiii. 207 They may trace..the radiant current through the human story of the Divine impulsings.