Can You Crack It? That Overlooked Netherlands Invention That Forged our Contemporary World
One can find numerous candidates to claim the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.
As per a new book, however, that title should go to the mechanised timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before automated cutting, constructing a modest trading ship necessitated around ten sawyers working over three months,” notes the author. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same amount of processed timber could be manufactured within a week.”
Owing to their speedy automated saw, which turned logs into boards with almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could build vessels more quickly than any other nation, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Dutch naval, economic and cultural dominance in Europe and the globe.
The First Genuine Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “mankind’s initial true industrial machine.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. A single part transformed its rotary movement into up-and-down motion for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward a measured step per stroke.
“Every component seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to combine them in order that the machine operated within a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting with each downward stroke while moving with each upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever application of basic components.”
Which brings us up to today’s challenge. I’d like you to reimagine a key the basic concepts behind this historic machine.
Round and Up
Construct a machine that turns circular motion to vertical motion. Your available these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or housing through which one of the bars will fit perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a stand, so that the components don’t fall down.)
The solution returns later today UK featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (less celebrated) candidates as the planet’s most impactful invention.
