Can You Crack It? That Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Shaped our Contemporary World
There are many contenders for the designation as “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a recent publication, however, that title belongs to a automated timber mill conceived through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before automated sawing, constructing a modest trading ship required around ten sawyers laboring over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than a week.”
Owing to this speedy automated cutter, which turned logs into boards with almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to construct vessels faster than any other nation, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, economic and artistic supremacy across the continent and the globe.
The First True Manufacturing Device
The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s first true factory machine.” A windmill rotated a wheel. A single part converted the rotary motion into vertical action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed the rotary movement into a lateral movement advancing the log toward the blade. A ratchet system shifted the log ahead one precise increment per cycle.
“Every component seemed simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine them so the machine acted in a precisely synchronized order, cutting with each descending stroke while advancing with each return motion. It was an astonishingly clever application of basic parts.”
Which leads us up to the current challenge. I’d like you to reinvent one of the fundamental concepts behind this historic machine.
Circular to Vertical
Design a machine which converts rotary movement to up-and-down motion. Your available these components only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or sleeve into which a single the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so the parts don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK with the answer.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please propose (non obvious) contenders as the world’s greatest creation.
