Are You Able to Solve This? That Forgotten Dutch Creation That Forged the Modern Globe
One can find many candidates to claim the title of “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, though, that honor belongs to a automated sawmill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before automated sawing, building a modest merchant vessel necessitated approximately 10 sawyers working for three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be manufactured within seven days.”
Owing to their rapid mechanical saw, that converted timber into boards with almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct ships faster than any other nation, which sparked one hundred years of Netherlands naval, economic as well as cultural dominance across the continent and the globe.
The First Genuine Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's sawmill, argues Dávila, was “mankind’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. One component converted the rotary movement to up-and-down action to power the saw. A separate mechanism changed that same spinning motion into a lateral motion advancing the timber to the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the log forward a measured step each stroke.
“Each element was simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to integrate these parts in order that the machine acted within a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting on every downward motion and advancing on every return stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental parts.”
Which leads us up to the current puzzle. I’d like you to reimagine one of the fundamental concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism which converts rotary motion to up-and-down motion. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, that 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 parts do not fall down.)
The solution returns later today UK with the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please suggest (less celebrated) candidates for the world’s greatest invention.
