Can You Solve It? That Forgotten Netherlands Creation That Shaped the Contemporary World
There are numerous candidates to claim the designation as “world’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to a mechanised sawmill conceived through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, constructing a simple trading ship necessitated around ten lumberjacks laboring over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same amount of processed timber could be produced within a week.”
Owing to their rapid mechanical saw, which converted logs into planks with almost no human effort, Dutch builders could build vessels more quickly compared to any other nation, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial and artistic supremacy in Europe and the globe.
The First Genuine Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends the writer, represented “mankind’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a gear. One component converted the rotary movement into up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. Another component transformed the rotary movement into a lateral movement feeding the log toward the blade. A ratchet system shifted the log ahead a measured step each cycle.
“Every component was modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius was to integrate them so they operated within a perfectly controlled order, cutting with each downward motion and advancing on every upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of basic components.”
Which leads us up to today’s puzzle. The task is for you to reinvent one of the basic ideas behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a machine that turns rotary motion to vertical motion. You have these components only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or sleeve into which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so the components do not collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK time with the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) contenders for the planet’s greatest invention.
