Can You Solve This? That Overlooked Netherlands Invention Which Forged our Modern World
One can find many contenders for the title of “planet’s most significant invention.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.
As per a new book, though, that honor belongs to the automated sawmill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before automated cutting, building a modest merchant vessel required approximately 10 lumberjacks working for 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of processed timber might be produced in less than a week.”
Thanks to this speedy mechanical cutter, which turned timber to boards with almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to build ships more quickly than anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial and artistic supremacy in Europe and the world.
The First Genuine Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends the writer, represented “humanity’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part converted its rotary motion into up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed that same spinning motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber toward the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the log forward one precise increment each cycle.
“Every component was modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts in order that the machine acted within a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting with each downward motion and moving on every upward stroke. It was a remarkably intelligent use of fundamental parts.”
A fact that brings us up to today’s puzzle. I’d like you to reinvent one of the basic concepts underpinning this historic invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism that turns circular motion to up-and-down motion. Your available these components only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a stand, so the components don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please suggest (less celebrated) candidates for the planet’s greatest invention.
