Can You Crack This? That Forgotten Netherlands Creation Which Shaped our Modern World
One can find numerous candidates to claim the title of “world’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a new book, however, that honor should go to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, constructing a modest trading ship required approximately ten lumberjacks working over three months,” notes the author. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, the same amount of cut lumber might be manufactured within a week.”
Owing to this rapid automated saw, which turned logs into boards with almost no human effort, Dutch builders were able to construct ships more quickly than any other nation, which sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial and cultural supremacy in Europe and the world.
The First True Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s first true industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a gear. One component transformed its circular motion into up-and-down motion to power the saw. Another component transformed the spinning motion into a lateral motion advancing the log toward the cutter. A ratchet system moved the wood ahead one precise increment per cycle.
“Each element seemed simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius was to integrate these parts so they operated in a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing on every downward motion while advancing on every return stroke. It was an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental components.”
Which leads us to the current puzzle. I’d like you to reinvent one of the basic ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Construct a machine which converts circular movement into up-and-down motion. You have these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing through which a single the bars will fit snugly. (Assume you can mount components on a stand, so that the parts do not fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK time with the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) contenders as the planet’s most impactful creation.
