Are You Able to Solve It? The Overlooked Netherlands Invention Which Forged our Contemporary Globe
One can find numerous contenders to claim the designation as “world’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a new book, though, that title belongs to a mechanised timber mill conceived by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten sawyers laboring over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of processed timber could be produced in less than seven days.”
Owing to their speedy mechanical cutter, which turned logs to planks with virtually no human effort, Dutch builders were able to construct vessels faster than any other nation, which sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, economic and cultural supremacy across the continent and the globe.
The First True Manufacturing Device
The inventor's lumber mill, argues Dávila, represented “mankind’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill turned a gear. A single part converted the circular motion into up-and-down action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the log toward the blade. A geared mechanism moved the log forward one precise increment each stroke.
“Every component seemed modest on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to integrate these parts so the machine operated within a perfectly controlled order, cutting on every descending stroke and advancing on every return stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent use of fundamental parts.”
A fact that brings us up to today’s puzzle. I’d like you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism which converts rotary movement into up-and-down action. You have these components only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a tube or sleeve through which one of the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that it is possible to mount components on a stand, so the parts don’t collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to suggest (non obvious) contenders as the planet’s most impactful invention.
