Are You Able to Crack This? That Forgotten Netherlands Invention That Forged our Modern Globe
One can find numerous contenders for the title of “world’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, however, that honor belongs to a automated sawmill conceived by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Prior to mechanised cutting, constructing a modest merchant vessel required approximately ten lumberjacks laboring for 90 days,” writes the author. “Using wind-driven sawmills, the same quantity of processed timber could be produced in less than a week.”
Owing to their rapid mechanical saw, which converted timber into boards using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders could build ships more quickly than any other nation, an advantage that sparked a century of Dutch naval, economic as well as cultural dominance across Europe and the globe.
The First Genuine Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, argues the writer, represented “humanity’s first true factory apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. One component transformed the circular movement into vertical action for the saw. Another component changed the spinning motion into a sideway’s movement advancing the log to the cutter. A ratchet system moved the log forward a measured step per cycle.
“Each element seemed modest by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to integrate these parts in order that they operated within a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every descending stroke and moving with each upward stroke. It was an astonishingly clever application of basic components.”
A fact that leads us up to today’s puzzle. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the fundamental concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Construct a machine that turns circular motion to up-and-down motion. You have these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a tube or housing into which a single the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that it is possible to mount components on a stand, so the components do not collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please suggest (non obvious) candidates as the planet’s most impactful invention.