Can You Solve It? The Overlooked Netherlands Creation That Forged the Contemporary World
There are numerous contenders for the title of “world’s greatest innovation.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, though, that honor belongs to the mechanised timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, building a simple trading ship required approximately ten lumberjacks working over 90 days,” notes the author. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, an identical quantity of processed timber might be manufactured in less than a week.”
Owing to this rapid automated saw, that turned logs into boards using almost no manual labor, the Dutch could construct vessels more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial as well as cultural supremacy in the continent and the globe.
The First True Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, contends the writer, represented “mankind’s first true industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a gear. One component transformed the rotary motion into up-and-down motion for the cutting blade. Another component changed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s motion advancing the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the wood ahead a measured step each cycle.
“Each element was modest on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts in order that the machine operated in a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every descending stroke while moving with each upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever use of fundamental components.”
Which brings us up to today’s challenge. I’d like you to reimagine one of the basic ideas behind this historic machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine that turns rotary movement to vertical action. You have these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or housing into which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so that the components do not fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please suggest (non obvious) candidates for the world’s most impactful invention.
