Are You Able to Crack This? The Forgotten Dutch Creation Which Shaped our Modern Globe
One can find many candidates to claim the title of “world’s greatest innovation.” The circular axle. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a new book, though, that title belongs to the automated timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Prior to mechanised cutting, constructing a simple trading ship necessitated around ten sawyers laboring over 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered lumber mills, an identical amount of processed timber could be manufactured within a week.”
Owing to their rapid automated saw, that converted timber into boards using virtually no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct vessels faster than anyone else, an advantage that unleashed a century of Netherlands maritime, economic as well as cultural supremacy across the continent and the globe.
The First Genuine Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, argues the writer, was “mankind’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a gear. A single part transformed the rotary motion into vertical action to power the saw. A separate mechanism transformed the rotary motion into a sideway’s motion feeding the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the log forward one precise increment each stroke.
“Every component was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to combine these parts in order that the machine operated within a perfectly controlled order, sawing with each descending motion and moving with each upward motion. This constituted a remarkably clever application of fundamental parts.”
A fact that brings us up to the current puzzle. The task is you to reinvent a key the basic ideas underpinning this historic machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine which converts rotary motion to up-and-down action. You have these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or housing through which a single the bars can slide perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so the components don’t collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK time with the answer.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) contenders for the planet’s most impactful creation.
