Are You Able to Crack This? That Overlooked Dutch Creation That Forged our Contemporary World
One can find many contenders for the title of “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
As per a recent publication, though, that title belongs to the mechanised timber mill conceived by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, constructing a modest trading ship required approximately 10 lumberjacks working for three months,” notes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be produced in less than seven days.”
Thanks to their rapid mechanical saw, which converted logs to boards using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to construct vessels faster compared to any other nation, which sparked a century of Dutch maritime, economic as well as cultural supremacy across the continent and the world.
The Original True Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues the writer, was “humanity’s initial true industrial machine.” A windmill turned a gear. One component transformed its rotary movement to up-and-down action for the cutting blade. Another component transformed that same rotary movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the log toward the cutter. A ratchet system moved the wood ahead a measured step per cycle.
“Every component seemed simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to combine them so they acted within a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting with each descending stroke while advancing on every upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of basic components.”
Which brings us up to the current challenge. I’d like you to reinvent one of the basic ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism which converts circular movement to up-and-down action. Your available these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or sleeve into which a single the bars will fit snugly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so that the components do not collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK time with the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please propose (less celebrated) candidates for the world’s most impactful invention.
