Can You Solve It? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation Which Shaped the Contemporary Globe
There are many contenders for the title of “planet’s most significant invention.” The circular axle. The movable type. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, however, that title should go to the automated timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before automated cutting, constructing a simple trading ship necessitated approximately ten sawyers laboring over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber might be manufactured within a week.”
Owing to this rapid mechanical saw, which turned logs to boards using virtually no manual labor, the Dutch could construct ships more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that sparked a century of Netherlands naval, economic as well as artistic dominance across the continent and the globe.
The Original True Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, represented “humanity’s first true industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. A single part converted the rotary movement into up-and-down motion to power the saw. A separate mechanism changed the rotary movement into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward one precise increment per stroke.
“Every component seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to integrate these parts so they acted within a perfectly controlled order, cutting on every descending stroke while moving on every return stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent use of basic parts.”
A fact that leads us up to the current challenge. The task is you to reinvent one of the fundamental concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Design a machine which converts rotary motion to vertical action. You have these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve through which a single the bars will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a stand, so the parts don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK with the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please propose (less celebrated) candidates for the world’s most impactful creation.
