Can You Crack This? The Overlooked Netherlands Invention That Shaped our Modern Globe
One can find many candidates for the designation as “planet’s greatest innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The combustion motor.
According to a new book, though, that title should go to a automated timber mill invented through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before automated sawing, building a simple trading ship required approximately ten sawyers laboring over three months,” writes the author. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same amount of processed timber might be manufactured within seven days.”
Owing to their rapid automated cutter, that turned timber to planks using virtually no manual labor, the Dutch could construct vessels more quickly than any other nation, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial as well as artistic dominance in the continent and the globe.
The Original Genuine Manufacturing Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. A single part converted its circular movement to vertical motion for the saw. A separate mechanism transformed the spinning movement into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the log forward one precise increment per stroke.
“Every component was modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius was to combine these parts in order that the machine operated within a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing with each descending motion and moving on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever use of basic parts.”
A fact that leads us to the current challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent a key the fundamental concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a machine that turns rotary movement to up-and-down motion. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or sleeve into which a single the rods will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a stand, so the components don’t collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates for the planet’s greatest creation.
