Can You Crack It? The Forgotten Netherlands Invention Which Forged our Modern World
One can find many candidates for the title of “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a new book, however, that title belongs to a mechanised sawmill conceived through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before automated sawing, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated around 10 sawyers working for three months,” writes the author. “Using wind-driven sawmills, the same quantity of processed timber might be produced in less than a week.”
Owing to this rapid mechanical cutter, which converted logs to planks with almost no manual labor, the Dutch could build vessels faster than any other nation, which unleashed one hundred years of Dutch maritime, economic and artistic supremacy across Europe and the world.
The First Genuine Industrial Device
The inventor's lumber mill, argues the writer, was “mankind’s first true industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part transformed its rotary movement into up-and-down action to power the saw. Another component changed that same spinning movement into a lateral movement feeding the timber to the cutter. A ratchet system moved the wood ahead a measured step each cycle.
“Each element seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to integrate these parts in order that the machine operated within a precisely synchronized order, cutting with each downward stroke while advancing with each upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of basic components.”
Which brings us to the current puzzle. The task is for you to reinvent one of the basic ideas behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a mechanism that turns circular movement into up-and-down motion. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a tube or sleeve through which a single the rods will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so the parts do not collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time with the answer.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please suggest (non obvious) candidates for the planet’s most impactful creation.
