Can You Solve It? The Forgotten Netherlands Invention Which Forged our Modern Globe
There are numerous candidates for the designation as “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, though, that title should go to a automated sawmill invented through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before automated cutting, building a modest merchant vessel required approximately 10 lumberjacks laboring for three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same amount of processed timber could be produced within seven days.”
Owing to their speedy automated cutter, which converted timber into planks with almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to construct vessels more quickly than any other nation, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Dutch maritime, financial as well as artistic supremacy in the continent and the globe.
The Original Genuine Industrial Device
The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “mankind’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. A single part transformed the rotary motion to vertical motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed the spinning movement into a lateral motion advancing the timber toward the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the wood forward one precise increment per cycle.
“Every component seemed simple on its own. The Dutchman’s genius was to integrate them in order that they operated within a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every descending stroke and moving with each upward motion. It was an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental parts.”
A fact that leads us up to today’s puzzle. The task is for you to reimagine a key the basic ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a mechanism that turns rotary motion to vertical action. Your available these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a tube or housing into which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so the parts do not fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please propose (less celebrated) candidates for the planet’s most impactful invention.
