Can You Solve This? The Overlooked Netherlands Creation Which Forged our Contemporary Globe
There are many candidates for the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a recent publication, however, that honor should go to the automated sawmill invented through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Prior to automated cutting, constructing a simple merchant vessel required approximately ten lumberjacks laboring for 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same amount of processed timber could be manufactured within seven days.”
Owing to their speedy automated saw, which converted timber to planks with almost no human effort, Dutch builders were able to build ships more quickly compared to anyone else, which unleashed a century of Dutch maritime, financial as well as cultural supremacy in the continent and the world.
The Original Genuine Industrial Device
The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “mankind’s initial true factory machine.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. One component converted the circular motion to vertical motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same spinning movement into a lateral movement feeding the log to the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood ahead one precise increment each cycle.
“Every component was modest by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to combine them in order that the machine acted in a precisely synchronized order, sawing with each descending stroke and advancing on every upward stroke. This constituted a remarkably intelligent application of basic parts.”
A fact that brings us up to today’s challenge. The task is you to reinvent a key the basic ideas behind this historic invention.
Round and Up
Construct a machine that turns circular motion to up-and-down action. Your available these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a tube or housing through which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a stand, so that the components do not collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the answer.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please suggest (less celebrated) contenders for the planet’s most impactful invention.
