Are You Able to Solve It? That Overlooked Dutch Creation That Forged the Contemporary World
There are many candidates for the title of “world’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, however, that title should go to the automated sawmill invented through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before automated sawing, constructing a simple trading ship required around ten sawyers laboring for 90 days,” writes the author. “Using wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of processed timber could be manufactured in less than a week.”
Thanks to this rapid mechanical cutter, that converted timber into boards using virtually no human effort, the Dutch were able to construct vessels more quickly than any other nation, an advantage that unleashed a century of Netherlands naval, financial and cultural supremacy across Europe and the globe.
The Original Genuine Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's sawmill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a gear. A single part converted its rotary movement to up-and-down motion to power the saw. Another component transformed that same spinning motion into a lateral movement advancing the timber toward the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the wood ahead a measured step each cycle.
“Every component was modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine them so they acted in a perfectly controlled order, sawing on every downward motion while moving with each return motion. It was an astonishingly clever use of fundamental parts.”
A fact that leads us to the current challenge. The task is for you to reimagine a key the basic ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism which converts circular motion to vertical action. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a stand, so that the components don’t fall down.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time with the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) contenders as the world’s greatest creation.
