Can You Crack This? The Overlooked Netherlands Invention Which Shaped the Contemporary Globe
One can find many contenders for the designation as “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a recent publication, though, that title belongs to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, constructing a simple merchant vessel required approximately ten sawyers laboring over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven lumber mills, an identical quantity of processed timber could be produced within seven days.”
Owing to their speedy automated cutter, which converted logs to planks using virtually no human effort, the Dutch could construct ships faster than any other nation, which unleashed a century of Dutch maritime, economic as well as artistic supremacy across the continent and the world.
The Original Genuine Manufacturing Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues Dávila, represented “mankind’s first true factory apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. One component converted the circular motion into up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed that same spinning motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber to the blade. A ratchet system moved the wood forward one precise increment per stroke.
“Every component was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to combine these parts so they operated in a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting with each descending motion and moving with each upward motion. It was a remarkably intelligent application of basic parts.”
A fact that leads us to the current puzzle. The task is you to reimagine a key the fundamental concepts behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine which converts circular movement to vertical action. You have these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or sleeve into which a single the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a stand, so that the components do not fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time featuring the answer.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please suggest (less celebrated) candidates for the world’s greatest creation.
