Can You Crack It? That Overlooked Netherlands Creation Which Forged our Contemporary World
There are many contenders to claim the designation as “world’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, though, that honor should go to the automated timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten lumberjacks laboring for three months,” writes the author. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber might be produced in less than a week.”
Owing to their rapid mechanical saw, which converted timber to planks with virtually no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct vessels more quickly than anyone else, which unleashed a century of Dutch maritime, economic as well as cultural supremacy in the continent and the globe.
The First Genuine Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues the writer, represented “humanity’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a gear. A single part transformed its rotary movement into vertical motion to power the saw. A separate mechanism transformed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s motion feeding the log toward the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the log ahead one precise increment each stroke.
“Each element seemed simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts so they operated within a perfectly controlled order, sawing with each descending motion and moving with each upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent use of fundamental parts.”
A fact that leads us to today’s puzzle. The task is for you to reinvent one of the basic ideas behind this historic machine.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism which converts rotary movement to up-and-down action. Your available these components only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a tube or housing into which a single the rods can slide perfectly. (Assume you can put things on a base, so the parts do not fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to suggest (non obvious) candidates for the world’s most impactful invention.
