Are You Able to Solve This? That Forgotten Netherlands Creation Which Shaped the Contemporary World
One can find many candidates for the title of “world’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a recent publication, however, that honor should go to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before automated sawing, constructing a modest trading ship necessitated around 10 lumberjacks laboring over three months,” notes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical quantity of processed timber might be manufactured within seven days.”
Owing to their rapid mechanical saw, which turned logs into planks with virtually no human effort, Dutch builders could construct ships more quickly compared to anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial as well as cultural dominance in the continent and the globe.
The First True Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, was “mankind’s initial true factory machine.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. One component converted the circular movement into up-and-down action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed that same spinning motion into a lateral movement feeding the log toward the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood ahead a measured step per cycle.
“Every component seemed simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to integrate these parts in order that they operated within a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every downward motion while advancing with each return stroke. This constituted a remarkably intelligent application of fundamental parts.”
A fact that leads us up to the current puzzle. The task is you to reinvent one of the basic concepts underpinning this historic invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism which converts rotary movement to vertical action. Your available these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or sleeve into which a single the bars will fit perfectly. (Assume you can put things on a stand, so that the components do not fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to propose (less celebrated) contenders as the planet’s most impactful invention.
