Are You Able to Solve This? That Overlooked Netherlands Invention That Shaped our Contemporary World
One can find numerous candidates for the designation as “world’s most significant invention.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a new book, though, that honor belongs to a automated timber mill conceived through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel required around ten lumberjacks working for 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber could be produced within a week.”
Thanks to their speedy automated cutter, that turned logs into boards with almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to build vessels more quickly compared to anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial as well as cultural dominance across the continent and the world.
The First Genuine Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “mankind’s first true factory apparatus.” A windmill turned a gear. One component transformed its rotary motion to vertical action to power the saw. Another component changed the rotary movement into a lateral movement advancing the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward one precise increment each stroke.
“Each element was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to combine them in order that the machine operated within a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every downward motion and advancing on every return motion. It was an astonishingly clever use of fundamental parts.”
A fact that leads us up to today’s challenge. The task is you to reimagine one of the fundamental concepts underpinning this historic machine.
Round and Up
Construct a machine which converts rotary movement to up-and-down motion. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or sleeve through which a single the bars will fit perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to mount components on a stand, so that the parts don’t fall down.)
The solution returns later today UK featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) candidates for the world’s greatest invention.
