Can You Crack This? The Overlooked Netherlands Creation Which Shaped the Contemporary World
There are many contenders to claim the designation as “planet’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, though, that honor belongs to a mechanised sawmill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, constructing a modest trading ship required around ten sawyers laboring for three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical quantity of cut lumber could be produced in less than a week.”
Owing to their rapid automated saw, that turned logs to boards using almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to construct ships more quickly than any other nation, an advantage that sparked a century of Dutch naval, economic and cultural supremacy in Europe and the world.
The First True Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends the writer, was “mankind’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. A single part converted its circular motion into vertical action for the saw. Another component changed that same spinning motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the log toward the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the wood ahead a measured step per cycle.
“Each element seemed modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to integrate these parts in order that the machine acted within a perfectly controlled order, sawing on every downward motion and moving with each upward stroke. It was an astonishingly clever application of fundamental components.”
A fact that brings us up to the current puzzle. The task is you to reimagine one of the fundamental concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Design a machine which converts rotary movement into up-and-down motion. You have these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing through which a single the rods can slide perfectly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a base, so that the components don’t collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s most impactful creation.
