Can You Crack This? That Forgotten Netherlands Creation Which Shaped our Contemporary World
One can find many candidates to claim the title of “world’s most significant invention.” The circular axle. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a new book, however, that honor should go to the automated timber mill conceived through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Prior to automated cutting, constructing a simple trading ship necessitated around ten sawyers working for 90 days,” notes the author. “Using wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of processed timber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Owing to this rapid mechanical cutter, that turned timber into planks using virtually no human effort, Dutch builders were able to build vessels more quickly compared to anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial as well as artistic dominance in Europe and the globe.
The Original True Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, contends the writer, was “mankind’s first true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a gear. One component transformed its circular motion to vertical motion for the saw. A separate mechanism transformed the spinning motion into a lateral movement feeding the log to the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the wood ahead one precise increment each stroke.
“Each element seemed simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to integrate these parts so they acted in a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing with each descending stroke and moving with each upward stroke. This constituted a remarkably clever use of fundamental parts.”
Which leads us up to the current puzzle. The task is you to reimagine one of the basic concepts behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism which converts rotary movement to vertical motion. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing into which a single the bars can slide snugly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a base, so that the components do not collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) candidates for the planet’s greatest creation.
