Can You Crack It? The Forgotten Netherlands Invention Which Shaped our Contemporary Globe
There are numerous candidates for the title of “planet’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to the automated sawmill conceived by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, building a modest merchant vessel necessitated around ten lumberjacks working for three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical amount of processed timber could be produced within a week.”
Thanks to this speedy automated saw, which converted logs to planks using almost no human effort, Dutch builders were able to construct vessels more quickly than any other nation, an advantage that unleashed a century of Netherlands naval, economic as well as cultural dominance in Europe and the globe.
The Original Genuine Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, represented “humanity’s initial true industrial machine.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. A single part converted its circular movement to up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. Another component changed that same rotary motion into a lateral movement advancing the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the wood forward one precise increment per cycle.
“Each element was modest by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to combine them so the machine operated in a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing on every downward motion while advancing on every return stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of fundamental parts.”
Which brings us up to the current puzzle. The task is you to reinvent a key the basic concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a mechanism which converts circular movement into up-and-down motion. Your available these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve through which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Assume you can put things on a stand, so that the components don’t collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) contenders as the world’s greatest creation.
