Can You Crack This? That Overlooked Dutch Invention That Forged the Modern World
One can find many candidates for the designation as “planet’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a new book, however, that title should go to the mechanised timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, building a modest merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten sawyers laboring for 90 days,” notes the author. “Using wind-powered sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber could be produced in less than a week.”
Owing to this rapid automated saw, that turned timber to boards using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to construct ships faster than anyone else, an advantage that unleashed a century of Dutch naval, financial as well as artistic dominance across Europe and the world.
The First True Manufacturing Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues Dávila, was “humanity’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a gear. One component converted the circular motion to vertical action for the saw. A separate mechanism transformed that same spinning motion into a sideway’s motion feeding the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward one precise increment each cycle.
“Each element was modest by itself. The Dutchman’s genius was to combine them in order that they acted in a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting on every descending motion while advancing with each return motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of basic parts.”
A fact that leads us up to the current puzzle. I’d like you to reimagine a key the fundamental concepts behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a machine that turns rotary movement to vertical motion. Your available these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a tube or housing into which a single the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a stand, so that the components do not collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK with the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates as the world’s most impactful creation.
