Are You Able to Crack This? The Overlooked Netherlands Invention That Shaped the Contemporary World
One can find numerous contenders for the designation as “planet’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, however, that title should go to a mechanised sawmill conceived by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before automated sawing, building a simple merchant vessel required approximately 10 sawyers working for three months,” writes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical quantity of processed timber might be manufactured in less than a week.”
Thanks to this rapid automated saw, that converted logs into boards using almost no human effort, Dutch builders were able to build vessels faster compared to anyone else, which sparked a century of Netherlands maritime, financial as well as artistic supremacy across Europe and the world.
The First True Industrial Device
The inventor's sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “mankind’s initial true factory machine.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part converted the circular movement to vertical motion for the saw. A separate mechanism changed the rotary movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the log toward the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood ahead a measured step per stroke.
“Every component was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to combine these parts in order that the machine acted in a perfectly controlled order, cutting with each descending stroke while advancing on every return motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of fundamental components.”
Which leads us up to today’s puzzle. I’d like for you to reimagine one of the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a machine that turns circular motion into vertical action. You have these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or sleeve through which one of the rods will fit perfectly. (Assume you can put things on a base, so the parts don’t collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK with the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) candidates for the planet’s most impactful creation.
