Are You Able to Crack This? That Forgotten Netherlands Creation That Shaped the Modern Globe
One can find many contenders for the designation as “world’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a recent publication, however, that honor should go to the automated sawmill conceived through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, building a modest merchant vessel required around ten lumberjacks working over three months,” notes the author. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be produced in less than seven days.”
Thanks to their rapid mechanical cutter, that turned logs into planks using virtually no human effort, the Dutch could construct ships faster than anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Netherlands naval, economic and artistic supremacy in the continent and the world.
The First Genuine Industrial Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, contends the writer, was “mankind’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a gear. A single part converted its circular motion into up-and-down action for the saw. Another component changed the rotary motion into a lateral motion feeding the timber toward the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward a measured step each stroke.
“Each element seemed modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to integrate these parts in order that the machine operated in a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing on every downward motion while moving with each return motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of fundamental components.”
Which leads us to today’s challenge. I’d like you to reinvent a key the fundamental ideas behind this historic invention.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine which converts rotary motion into up-and-down action. You have these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve into which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Assume you can put things on a stand, so the components do not collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates for the planet’s greatest invention.
