Can You Crack This? The Forgotten Dutch Creation Which Forged the Contemporary Globe
One can find numerous candidates for the title of “planet’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, however, that honor belongs to a mechanised sawmill conceived by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, building a modest merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten sawyers working over 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, the same amount of processed timber might be produced within seven days.”
Owing to this rapid mechanical saw, that turned logs to boards using almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could build ships faster than any other nation, which unleashed a century of Dutch maritime, economic as well as artistic supremacy across the continent and the globe.
The First True Industrial Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, argues Dávila, was “mankind’s first true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. A single part converted its circular movement to up-and-down action to power the saw. A separate mechanism changed the spinning motion into a lateral motion feeding the timber toward the blade. A ratchet system moved the wood ahead one precise increment each stroke.
“Every component was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius was to combine them so the machine acted within a perfectly controlled order, cutting with each descending stroke and moving with each upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental components.”
Which leads us up to the current challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent a key the basic ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism which converts circular movement into up-and-down action. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or housing through which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a stand, so the parts don’t collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK with the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to propose (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s greatest creation.
