Can You Crack This? That Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Forged the Modern World
One can find many candidates to claim the title of “planet’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.
As per a new book, however, that honor should go to the automated sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before automated sawing, constructing a simple merchant vessel necessitated approximately 10 lumberjacks laboring for three months,” writes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber might be produced within a week.”
Owing to their speedy mechanical cutter, which turned logs into planks using almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct vessels faster compared to anyone else, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Dutch maritime, economic and cultural dominance in Europe and the globe.
The Original True Industrial Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, argues the writer, was “mankind’s initial true factory apparatus.” A windmill rotated a gear. One component transformed its rotary movement to vertical motion to power the saw. Another component changed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the log to the blade. A ratchet system moved the wood ahead one precise increment each cycle.
“Each element was simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to integrate these parts so they operated within a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing with each downward stroke and advancing with each return motion. It was an astonishingly intelligent application of basic components.”
A fact that brings us up to the current puzzle. I’d like for you to reimagine a key the basic ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Circular to Vertical
Design a mechanism that turns rotary motion into vertical action. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve through which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a base, so that the components do not collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK with the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s most impactful creation.
