Can You Crack This? The Forgotten Netherlands Invention Which Shaped our Contemporary Globe
One can find many candidates for the title of “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, however, that title belongs to a mechanised sawmill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, building a modest trading ship required around 10 lumberjacks working over three months,” writes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber could be produced in less than seven days.”
Owing to their rapid mechanical saw, that turned logs into planks using almost no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to build vessels more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that sparked a century of Netherlands maritime, economic as well as artistic dominance across Europe and the globe.
The Original Genuine Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, represented “humanity’s initial authentic factory machine.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part converted the circular motion into up-and-down motion for the saw. A separate mechanism transformed the rotary movement into a lateral movement feeding the timber toward the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood ahead a measured step per cycle.
“Each element seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to combine them so the machine operated in a precisely synchronized order, sawing on every descending stroke and moving with each upward stroke. It was an astonishingly clever use of fundamental parts.”
Which leads us to the current puzzle. The task is for you to reimagine one of the fundamental concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Design a machine which converts circular motion to vertical action. Your available these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or sleeve through which a single the bars will fit snugly. (Assume you can mount components on a stand, so the components don’t fall down.)
The solution returns later today UK time featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) contenders for the world’s most impactful creation.
