Are You Able to Solve This? That Forgotten Netherlands Creation That Shaped our Modern Globe
There are many candidates for the designation as “world’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, though, that honor should go to a automated sawmill invented through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Prior to mechanised cutting, building a simple merchant vessel required approximately 10 sawyers laboring over 90 days,” notes the author. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of processed timber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Owing to their rapid automated saw, that turned timber into boards with virtually no human effort, Dutch builders could construct vessels more quickly than any other nation, which sparked one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial and artistic dominance across the continent and the world.
The Original Genuine Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's sawmill, contends the writer, represented “humanity’s initial true factory apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. One component transformed the circular motion to vertical motion to power the cutting blade. Another component transformed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber toward the blade. A ratchet system shifted the log forward one precise increment each stroke.
“Every component seemed modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine them so the machine operated in a precisely synchronized order, sawing with each descending motion while advancing with each return stroke. This constituted a remarkably clever use of fundamental components.”
Which leads us to today’s challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent a key the fundamental concepts behind this historic invention.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism that turns circular movement to up-and-down motion. Your available these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or housing through which one of the rods will fit snugly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so that the components don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates for the world’s most impactful invention.
