Are You Able to Crack It? That Overlooked Dutch Invention Which Forged our Modern Globe
There are many candidates for the designation as “planet’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, though, that honor belongs to the automated timber mill invented by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Prior to automated cutting, building a simple merchant vessel required approximately ten lumberjacks working for three months,” writes the author. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, an identical amount of processed timber might be produced within a week.”
Thanks to this rapid automated cutter, that turned logs into planks using virtually no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct vessels more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, economic and artistic supremacy across the continent and the globe.
The Original Genuine Manufacturing Device
The inventor's sawmill, argues the writer, represented “humanity’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill turned a gear. One component transformed the rotary motion to vertical action to power the cutting blade. Another component changed the spinning movement into a sideway’s movement advancing the timber toward the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood forward a measured step each cycle.
“Every component was modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to integrate them in order that they acted in a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing with each descending stroke while moving with each upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of basic parts.”
A fact that brings us up to the current puzzle. The task is for you to reimagine one of the basic concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism that turns rotary motion to up-and-down motion. Your available these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a stand, so the parts don’t fall down.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK with the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) contenders for the world’s most impactful invention.
