Are You Able to Solve It? The Overlooked Dutch Invention Which Forged our Modern World
There are numerous candidates for the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The combustion motor.
According to a new book, however, that title belongs to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, constructing a simple merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten lumberjacks working for 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered lumber mills, an identical quantity of cut lumber might be produced within a week.”
Owing to this rapid automated saw, which turned logs into planks with virtually no manual labor, the Dutch were able to build vessels more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial as well as artistic supremacy in the continent and the globe.
The First Genuine Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's sawmill, contends the writer, represented “humanity’s initial authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill turned a gear. One component transformed the rotary motion to up-and-down motion for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed the spinning movement into a lateral motion advancing the log toward the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the log ahead a measured step per cycle.
“Every component seemed modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine them in order that the machine operated in a perfectly controlled order, cutting with each downward motion and advancing on every return motion. It was an astonishingly clever application of basic parts.”
A fact that leads us to the current challenge. The task is you to reinvent one of the fundamental concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine that turns rotary motion to vertical motion. Your available these components only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing into which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a base, so that the parts do not fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK time featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) contenders for the world’s most impactful creation.
