Can You Crack It? That Forgotten Dutch Creation Which Shaped the Contemporary Globe
There are numerous contenders for the designation as “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to the mechanised sawmill invented through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before automated sawing, constructing a simple trading ship required around 10 sawyers working over three months,” writes the author. “Using wind-driven sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be manufactured within a week.”
Thanks to their rapid automated saw, that converted logs to planks using almost no manual labor, the Dutch could construct ships more quickly than any other nation, which unleashed a century of Netherlands naval, financial as well as cultural dominance in Europe and the globe.
The Original True Industrial Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, argues Dávila, was “mankind’s initial true factory machine.” A windmill turned a gear. A single part converted its rotary movement into up-and-down motion to power the saw. Another component changed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the log to the blade. A ratchet system moved the log forward one precise increment per cycle.
“Each element was modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine them so they acted within a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing with each downward motion while advancing with each upward motion. It was a remarkably intelligent use of basic components.”
A fact that brings us up to today’s puzzle. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the fundamental concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism which converts circular motion to vertical action. Your available these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve through which a single the bars will fit snugly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so the components don’t fall down.)
The solution returns later today UK with the answer.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please propose (less celebrated) contenders as the planet’s greatest creation.
