Are You Able to Crack This? The Overlooked Netherlands Creation Which Forged our Modern Globe
One can find many candidates for the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, however, that honor belongs to the mechanised sawmill conceived by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before automated sawing, constructing a modest trading ship necessitated around ten lumberjacks working over 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber might be manufactured within a week.”
Thanks to this speedy automated saw, that turned logs to planks using virtually no human effort, the Dutch could build ships more quickly compared to anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, economic and cultural supremacy across Europe and the globe.
The Original True Manufacturing Device
The inventor's sawmill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s first true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. One component transformed the rotary motion into vertical motion for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary movement into a lateral movement feeding the log toward the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the wood forward one precise increment each stroke.
“Each element seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to integrate these parts so they acted within a perfectly controlled order, sawing with each downward motion while advancing on every upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of fundamental parts.”
Which leads us to the current puzzle. I’d like you to reinvent a key the fundamental concepts underpinning this historic machine.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism which converts circular motion to up-and-down motion. Your available these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing through which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Assume you can put things on a base, so the components do not fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates for the world’s greatest invention.
