Are You Able to Solve This? The Forgotten Dutch Creation That Shaped the Contemporary World
There are numerous candidates for the designation as “planet’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to the mechanised sawmill invented through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, building a modest trading ship required approximately ten sawyers working over three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of processed timber might be produced in less than a week.”
Thanks to their speedy automated saw, which turned logs into boards with almost no human effort, Dutch builders could construct ships more quickly than any other nation, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial as well as artistic dominance in the continent and the globe.
The First True Manufacturing Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues the writer, was “humanity’s initial true factory machine.” A wind turbine turned a gear. A single part converted its circular motion to vertical motion for the saw. A separate mechanism transformed the rotary movement into a sideway’s movement advancing the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism moved the log ahead a measured step each stroke.
“Every component seemed modest on its own. The Dutchman’s genius was to combine them so they acted in a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every descending motion and moving on every upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental parts.”
A fact that brings us up to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reinvent a key the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Design a machine that turns circular motion into vertical action. Your available these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the rods will fit snugly. (Assume you can put things on a stand, so the components do not fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK time with the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please suggest (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s greatest creation.
