Are You Able to Crack It? That Overlooked Netherlands Creation Which Forged our Contemporary World
There are many contenders for the title of “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a recent publication, though, that honor should go to a mechanised timber mill invented through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before automated sawing, building a simple merchant vessel required around 10 sawyers working for 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber might be manufactured within seven days.”
Thanks to this speedy mechanical saw, which converted logs into boards using almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to build ships more quickly than any other nation, which unleashed a century of Netherlands maritime, financial and artistic supremacy in the continent and the globe.
The Original Genuine Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a gear. A single part transformed the rotary movement to vertical action to power the saw. A separate mechanism changed the rotary movement into a sideway’s motion advancing the timber to the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the log forward one precise increment per stroke.
“Each element seemed simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts so they acted within a perfectly controlled order, sawing on every descending motion and advancing on every upward motion. This constituted a remarkably intelligent use of fundamental components.”
Which brings us up to the current challenge. The task is for you to reinvent a key the basic concepts behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Design a machine which converts circular motion to up-and-down motion. Your available these components only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or sleeve through which one of the bars will fit perfectly. (Assume it is possible to mount components on a base, so the parts do not collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK featuring the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) contenders as the planet’s most impactful invention.