Can You Solve This? The Forgotten Dutch Invention Which Shaped our Contemporary Globe
One can find many candidates for the title of “world’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a new book, though, that title should go to the mechanised sawmill conceived through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before automated cutting, constructing a modest trading ship required around ten sawyers laboring over 90 days,” notes the author. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, the same amount of cut lumber could be manufactured within seven days.”
Thanks to this rapid automated cutter, that turned timber to planks using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to construct ships faster compared to anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial and artistic supremacy in Europe and the world.
The Original Genuine Manufacturing Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s first authentic industrial machine.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part converted its rotary movement to up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same spinning motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the log toward the blade. A geared mechanism moved the log forward a measured step each cycle.
“Every component was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to integrate these parts in order that the machine operated within a precisely synchronized order, sawing with each descending stroke and moving on every upward stroke. This constituted a remarkably clever application of basic components.”
Which leads us up to today’s puzzle. The task is you to reimagine a key the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Circular to Vertical
Design a machine that turns rotary motion to vertical motion. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or housing into which one of the rods can slide perfectly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a stand, so the components don’t collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK time featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to propose (non obvious) contenders as the world’s greatest invention.
