Are You Able to Solve It? That Overlooked Dutch Invention Which Forged the Contemporary Globe
One can find numerous candidates to claim the designation as “world’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a new book, however, that honor belongs to a mechanised sawmill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before automated cutting, constructing a modest merchant vessel necessitated approximately 10 lumberjacks laboring for three months,” writes the author. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be produced in less than seven days.”
Thanks to their speedy automated cutter, that converted logs into planks using almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct ships faster compared to anyone else, which sparked a century of Dutch naval, financial as well as cultural supremacy in the continent and the world.
The Original True Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, contends the writer, was “mankind’s initial true factory apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. One component transformed its circular movement into vertical action for the saw. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary motion into a lateral movement feeding the timber toward the cutter. A ratchet system moved the wood ahead a measured step each cycle.
“Each element was modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to integrate these parts so they operated in a perfectly controlled order, cutting with each descending stroke and moving with each upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of basic parts.”
A fact that brings us to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reimagine a key the basic ideas behind this historic machine.
Round and Up
Design a machine which converts circular movement to up-and-down motion. Your available these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or sleeve through which a single the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that it is possible to mount components on a stand, so the components do not collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time with the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) candidates for the world’s most impactful creation.
