Are You Able to Solve It? That Forgotten Netherlands Invention That Shaped our Modern World
One can find many contenders for the title of “planet’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a new book, however, that title belongs to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Prior to automated cutting, building a simple trading ship necessitated approximately 10 sawyers working over 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same quantity of processed timber might be produced in less than a week.”
Owing to their speedy mechanical saw, which converted timber into boards using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders could build ships more quickly than any other nation, which sparked a century of Dutch maritime, financial as well as cultural dominance across the continent and the globe.
The First True Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, contends the writer, represented “humanity’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. One component converted its rotary movement into vertical action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber toward the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward one precise increment per cycle.
“Each element was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to integrate these parts so the machine operated in a precisely synchronized order, cutting with each descending stroke while moving with each upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of basic components.”
A fact that leads us up to the current puzzle. The task is for you to reinvent a key the fundamental concepts behind this historic machine.
Circular to Vertical
Design a machine that turns rotary motion into up-and-down motion. Your available these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the rods can slide perfectly. (Assume you can put things on a stand, so the parts do not fall down.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK with the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) candidates for the world’s most impactful creation.
