Can You Crack It? That Overlooked Netherlands Creation Which Shaped our Modern World
There are numerous candidates for the designation as “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a new book, though, that honor should go to the mechanised timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, building a modest merchant vessel necessitated around ten lumberjacks working for 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber might be produced in less than seven days.”
Thanks to their speedy automated saw, that converted logs into planks using virtually no human effort, the Dutch were able to build vessels more quickly compared to anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial as well as cultural dominance in the continent and the world.
The First True Manufacturing Device
The inventor's sawmill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. One component converted the rotary movement to up-and-down motion for the cutting blade. Another component changed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s movement feeding the log toward the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the log ahead a measured step each stroke.
“Every component seemed modest on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to combine them in order that the machine operated within a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting on every downward stroke while advancing with each upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental components.”
Which brings us up to the current puzzle. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Design a machine that turns rotary movement into vertical motion. You have these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so the components do not fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK with the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please propose (less celebrated) candidates for the world’s greatest invention.
