Are You Able to Crack It? That Overlooked Netherlands Invention That Shaped the Modern Globe
One can find numerous contenders to claim the designation as “world’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, though, that title should go to a automated timber mill invented through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before automated sawing, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated around ten sawyers laboring over 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same quantity of processed timber might be produced within seven days.”
Thanks to this speedy automated saw, which converted timber to boards using almost no human effort, Dutch builders were able to build vessels more quickly compared to any other nation, an advantage that unleashed a century of Dutch naval, financial and cultural supremacy in the continent and the globe.
The Original True Industrial Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s initial authentic factory apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part converted its rotary movement into up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed that same spinning motion into a lateral movement feeding the log to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the wood ahead one precise increment per stroke.
“Every component was modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to combine these parts so the machine operated within a perfectly controlled order, cutting on every descending motion and advancing with each upward motion. This constituted a remarkably intelligent use of basic components.”
Which brings us up to the current puzzle. The task is you to reinvent one of the basic ideas behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism which converts circular movement to vertical action. Your available these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve through which one of the rods will fit snugly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so the components don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK time featuring the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) contenders as the planet’s most impactful creation.
