Can You Crack It? The Overlooked Netherlands Invention Which Forged the Modern World
One can find many contenders for the title of “world’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
As per a new book, however, that title should go to a automated sawmill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, constructing a simple trading ship necessitated approximately ten lumberjacks laboring for 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-driven lumber mills, an identical quantity of processed timber could be manufactured within seven days.”
Owing to this speedy automated saw, which turned logs into boards with almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could build ships more quickly compared to anyone else, which unleashed a century of Netherlands naval, economic and artistic dominance in the continent and the globe.
The Original Genuine Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “mankind’s initial authentic factory machine.” A windmill rotated a gear. One component converted the rotary movement into up-and-down action to power the saw. Another component transformed that same rotary movement into a lateral movement advancing the timber to the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward a measured step per cycle.
“Every component was modest on its own. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to combine these parts in order that they acted in a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting on every descending stroke while moving with each upward stroke. It was an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental parts.”
A fact that leads us up to the current puzzle. The task is you to reimagine a key the basic concepts behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism that turns rotary movement into up-and-down motion. You have these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or sleeve into which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so the components don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK time with the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (non obvious) contenders as the world’s greatest invention.
