Can You Crack It? The Forgotten Dutch Invention Which Shaped our Contemporary World
One can find numerous contenders to claim the title of “planet’s most significant invention.” The circular axle. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to the mechanised timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, building a modest merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten lumberjacks laboring for three months,” writes the author. “With wind-driven lumber mills, an identical amount of processed timber could be produced in less than a week.”
Owing to this rapid automated saw, that converted logs into boards using virtually no manual labor, the Dutch could build ships more quickly than anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial and artistic supremacy in Europe and the world.
The Original Genuine Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “mankind’s first authentic industrial machine.” A windmill turned a gear. One component transformed its circular motion into up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s movement advancing the timber toward the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the log ahead a measured step each stroke.
“Each element seemed simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine them in order that they acted in a perfectly controlled order, cutting with each downward stroke while advancing on every upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of basic components.”
A fact that brings us up to the current puzzle. I’d like you to reimagine one of the basic ideas underpinning this historic machine.
Round and Up
Construct a machine which converts rotary motion to up-and-down motion. Your available these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve into which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to mount components on a stand, so that the components don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK with the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) candidates as the planet’s greatest invention.
