Are You Able to Solve This? The Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Forged the Modern World
One can find many candidates for the title of “world’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a new book, however, that title should go to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before automated cutting, constructing a simple trading ship necessitated around ten lumberjacks laboring for three months,” writes the author. “Using wind-driven sawmills, an identical quantity of cut lumber might be manufactured within seven days.”
Thanks to this rapid automated cutter, which turned timber to planks with almost no human effort, the Dutch could construct vessels faster than any other nation, which unleashed one hundred years of Dutch maritime, financial as well as cultural supremacy in the continent and the globe.
The First Genuine Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s first true industrial machine.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. One component transformed the rotary movement to up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. Another component changed the rotary motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the timber toward the blade. A ratchet system shifted the log ahead one precise increment each cycle.
“Every component was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to integrate them so they operated in a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting with each descending motion while advancing with each return motion. This constituted a remarkably intelligent application of fundamental components.”
A fact that brings us to the current challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the fundamental concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Construct a machine which converts rotary movement to vertical motion. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or housing into which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so the parts don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please suggest (non obvious) candidates for the world’s greatest creation.
