Can You Crack It? That Overlooked Netherlands Invention Which Shaped our Modern World
There are many candidates for the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a recent publication, though, that honor should go to a mechanised timber mill invented through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Prior to mechanised cutting, building a simple trading ship required around 10 sawyers working over three months,” writes the author. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, an identical quantity of processed timber might be manufactured within a week.”
Owing to this rapid mechanical saw, which converted logs into planks with virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to build vessels more quickly compared to anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial and artistic dominance in the continent and the globe.
The Original Genuine Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, was “mankind’s initial true industrial machine.” A wind turbine turned a gear. A single part transformed its rotary motion to up-and-down motion for the saw. A separate mechanism transformed that same rotary movement into a lateral motion feeding the log toward the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward one precise increment per stroke.
“Each element was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to integrate these parts in order that they operated within a precisely synchronized order, sawing with each downward stroke and advancing on every upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent use of fundamental components.”
Which brings us to today’s puzzle. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the basic concepts behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Design a machine that turns rotary movement into up-and-down motion. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so that the components do not collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time featuring the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) contenders for the planet’s greatest invention.
