Can You Solve This? That Forgotten Dutch Creation Which Forged the Modern World
One can find numerous candidates to claim the title of “planet’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a new book, though, that honor belongs to the mechanised timber mill invented through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before automated cutting, constructing a simple trading ship necessitated around ten sawyers working over 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of processed timber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Owing to this speedy mechanical saw, which converted timber into planks using almost no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to construct vessels faster than anyone else, an advantage that sparked a century of Dutch maritime, financial and artistic dominance across the continent and the world.
The Original True Industrial Machine
The inventor's sawmill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s initial true factory apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a gear. A single part transformed the circular movement into vertical action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed the rotary motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the log toward the cutter. A geared mechanism moved 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 so the machine acted in a precisely synchronized order, sawing with each downward motion and moving on every return stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of basic parts.”
Which brings us to today’s challenge. I’d like you to reimagine one of the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism which converts circular motion into up-and-down action. Your available these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or housing through which one of the bars will fit perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a stand, so the parts don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK time with the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please propose (non obvious) contenders as the world’s most impactful invention.
