Can You Solve This? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation Which Forged the Contemporary Globe
One can find many contenders for the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a recent publication, however, that title belongs to the mechanised sawmill conceived through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before automated cutting, building a simple trading ship necessitated around ten sawyers laboring for three months,” notes the author. “Using wind-powered sawmills, an identical quantity of cut lumber might be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Owing to this speedy automated cutter, which turned timber into planks with almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct vessels faster than anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, economic and cultural dominance in the continent and the globe.
The First Genuine Industrial Machine
The inventor's sawmill, argues the writer, was “mankind’s first authentic industrial machine.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. One component transformed its circular motion to up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed the rotary movement into a lateral motion feeding the timber toward the blade. A ratchet system shifted the log ahead a measured step each stroke.
“Every component seemed modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius was to integrate these parts so the machine acted within a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every downward stroke and moving with each return motion. This constituted a remarkably intelligent application of fundamental components.”
Which leads us up to the current challenge. I’d like you to reinvent a key the basic concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism which converts rotary motion into vertical action. You have these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or housing through which one of the rods can slide perfectly. (Assume you can put things on a base, so the components do not fall down.)
The solution returns later today UK with the answer.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please suggest (non obvious) candidates as the world’s most impactful creation.
