Can You Crack It? That Forgotten Netherlands Invention That Shaped the Contemporary Globe
One can find numerous contenders for the title of “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a new book, though, that title belongs to a mechanised sawmill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, building a simple merchant vessel required around ten sawyers laboring over three months,” writes the author. “Using wind-driven sawmills, the same amount of cut lumber might be produced in less than a week.”
Thanks to this speedy mechanical cutter, which converted logs to boards using almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to build vessels faster compared to anyone else, which unleashed a century of Dutch maritime, economic and cultural supremacy in Europe and the world.
The First Genuine Industrial Device
The inventor's lumber mill, argues the writer, represented “mankind’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. A single part transformed its rotary motion to up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. Another component changed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber toward the cutter. A ratchet system moved the log ahead a measured step each cycle.
“Every component seemed modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine them so they acted in a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every downward motion while moving with each return stroke. It was a remarkably clever application of basic components.”
Which leads us up to the current puzzle. I’d like for you to reimagine one of the fundamental concepts behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine which converts circular movement into vertical motion. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or sleeve through which a single the rods will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so the components do not collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK with the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (less celebrated) contenders as the planet’s greatest creation.
