Are You Able to Solve This? The Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Forged our Contemporary Globe
There are many candidates to claim the designation as “planet’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, however, that title belongs to the mechanised sawmill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, building a modest trading ship required approximately 10 sawyers laboring over three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than a week.”
Thanks to this speedy mechanical saw, that turned timber into boards using virtually no human effort, the Dutch were able to construct ships faster than anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, economic and artistic dominance across Europe and the globe.
The Original Genuine Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “mankind’s initial authentic factory machine.” A windmill rotated a gear. A single part converted its circular movement to vertical action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed that same rotary movement into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the log ahead one precise increment each cycle.
“Every component was simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts in order that the machine operated in a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing on every downward motion and moving on every return stroke. This constituted a remarkably intelligent application of basic components.”
Which leads us to the current puzzle. I’d like you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas behind this historic machine.
Round and Up
Construct a machine which converts rotary movement to up-and-down motion. You have these items only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or sleeve into which a single the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a stand, so the components don’t fall down.)
The solution returns later today UK with the answer.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to propose (less celebrated) candidates as the planet’s greatest creation.