Are You Able to Crack This? That Forgotten Netherlands Invention Which Forged our Modern Globe
One can find numerous contenders to claim the designation as “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a new book, though, that title should go to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Prior to mechanised cutting, constructing a simple merchant vessel required approximately 10 lumberjacks laboring for three months,” writes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of processed timber could be produced within a week.”
Thanks to their speedy mechanical cutter, that converted logs into boards with almost no human effort, the Dutch could construct vessels faster than anyone else, an advantage that sparked a century of Netherlands maritime, financial as well as artistic supremacy in the continent and the globe.
The Original Genuine Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues the writer, represented “humanity’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. A single part transformed the rotary movement into vertical action to power the saw. A separate mechanism changed the spinning movement into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber to the blade. A ratchet system moved the wood ahead one precise increment each cycle.
“Each element was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to combine these parts so they acted in a precisely synchronized order, cutting with each downward motion and advancing on every return stroke. It was an astonishingly clever application of basic parts.”
Which leads us up to today’s puzzle. I’d like you to reimagine one of the basic concepts underpinning this historic machine.
Round and Up
Design a machine that turns circular motion to vertical motion. You have these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or housing through which a single the bars can slide snugly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a base, so the parts do not fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to suggest (non obvious) candidates for the planet’s greatest invention.
