Are You Able to Crack It? That Forgotten Netherlands Invention That Forged the Modern World
There are many candidates for the designation as “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
As per a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, constructing a simple merchant vessel necessitated around ten sawyers laboring over 90 days,” writes the author. “Using wind-driven sawmills, the same amount of processed timber could be manufactured within a week.”
Owing to their rapid mechanical saw, that converted timber to planks using almost no human effort, Dutch builders could build ships faster compared to anyone else, an advantage that unleashed a century of Dutch maritime, financial and artistic dominance across the continent and the world.
The First Genuine Industrial Machine
The inventor's sawmill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part transformed its circular movement into vertical action for the cutting blade. Another component changed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the log to the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward a measured step per stroke.
“Every component was modest by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to combine them so the machine operated within a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing with each downward motion while moving with each return stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of fundamental parts.”
Which leads us up to today’s challenge. I’d like for you to reimagine one of the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a machine that turns rotary movement to up-and-down action. You have these components only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve through which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a base, so that the parts don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) candidates for the planet’s greatest invention.
