Can You Solve It? That Forgotten Netherlands Invention That Shaped our Contemporary World
One can find numerous candidates for the title of “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, however, that honor should go to the mechanised sawmill invented through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, building a modest merchant vessel required around 10 lumberjacks laboring for 90 days,” writes the author. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, an identical amount of processed timber might be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Thanks to this speedy automated cutter, which turned logs to boards using almost no human effort, Dutch builders could build vessels faster than any other nation, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial and artistic dominance in Europe and the globe.
The First Genuine Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, represented “humanity’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill turned a gear. One component transformed the rotary movement into up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary movement into a sideway’s motion advancing the log toward the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward a measured step per cycle.
“Every component was simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius was to combine them so the machine operated in a precisely synchronized order, sawing on every downward stroke while moving with each return stroke. It was an astonishingly intelligent use of basic parts.”
Which leads us to the current challenge. The task is for you to reinvent a key the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism which converts circular movement into vertical action. You have these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or sleeve into which a single the rods can slide snugly. (Assume it is possible to mount components on a stand, so the components don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK with the answer.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please suggest (non obvious) contenders as the world’s greatest creation.
