Are You Able to Crack This? That Overlooked Netherlands Invention That Forged our Modern Globe
One can find many contenders for the designation as “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, however, that title belongs to a automated timber mill invented by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, constructing a simple merchant vessel required approximately ten sawyers working over three months,” notes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, the same amount of cut lumber could be produced within a week.”
Owing to this rapid mechanical cutter, which converted timber into boards using almost no manual labor, the Dutch could build ships more quickly compared to anyone else, an advantage that unleashed a century of Dutch naval, financial as well as cultural dominance across the continent and the globe.
The First True Manufacturing Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues the writer, represented “mankind’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. One component converted its circular motion into up-and-down motion for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed that same rotary movement into a sideway’s movement feeding the log to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward one precise increment each stroke.
“Each element seemed modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to integrate these parts in order that they operated in a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing with each downward stroke and advancing on every upward stroke. This constituted a remarkably intelligent use of fundamental components.”
A fact that leads us up to the current puzzle. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the basic ideas underpinning this historic invention.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine that turns rotary motion to up-and-down motion. Your available these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the rods will fit snugly. (Consider that you can put things on a stand, so the components don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK with the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) contenders for the world’s greatest creation.
