Are You Able to Crack It? That Overlooked Netherlands Creation Which Shaped our Modern Globe
One can find numerous candidates for the title of “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
As per a new book, though, that honor belongs to a mechanised timber mill invented through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, constructing a simple trading ship required around 10 sawyers working over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber could be manufactured within a week.”
Thanks to their rapid automated saw, which converted timber into boards with virtually no manual labor, the Dutch could construct vessels faster than anyone else, which unleashed a century of Dutch naval, economic and artistic supremacy across the continent and the world.
The Original True Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, contends the writer, was “mankind’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. One component converted the circular motion to up-and-down motion to power the saw. Another component changed that same spinning motion into a sideway’s movement advancing the log to the blade. A ratchet system moved the log forward one precise increment per cycle.
“Every component seemed simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine them in order that they operated in a perfectly controlled order, cutting on every descending stroke and advancing on every upward motion. It was a remarkably clever use of fundamental components.”
Which leads us to the current challenge. I’d like you to reimagine one of the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Construct a machine which converts circular motion into up-and-down motion. Your available these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or housing through which a single the rods can slide snugly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so that the parts don’t fall down.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time with the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s greatest invention.
