Can You Crack This? That Overlooked Netherlands Creation Which Shaped the Contemporary Globe
One can find many contenders for the title of “world’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a recent publication, however, that title should go to the mechanised sawmill conceived by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, building a modest merchant vessel required around 10 sawyers working for three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber could be produced within seven days.”
Thanks to this speedy mechanical saw, that converted logs into planks using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to construct vessels faster than any other nation, an advantage that sparked a century of Netherlands maritime, financial as well as artistic dominance across the continent and the globe.
The Original Genuine Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues the writer, represented “mankind’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. A single part transformed the circular motion into up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed the rotary motion into a lateral motion feeding the log toward the blade. A geared mechanism moved the log forward one precise increment per cycle.
“Every component was modest on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts in order that they operated within a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting with each downward motion and advancing with each upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of fundamental components.”
Which brings us to today’s puzzle. The task is for you to reimagine a key the basic ideas behind this historic machine.
Round and Up
Construct a machine which converts rotary movement to vertical motion. Your available these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a tube or sleeve into which a single the rods will fit perfectly. (Assume you can put things on a stand, so the parts do not collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s most impactful invention.
