Can You Solve It? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation That Forged the Modern Globe
One can find numerous contenders for the designation as “planet’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a new book, however, that honor belongs to the automated sawmill conceived by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Prior to automated cutting, constructing a modest merchant vessel required around ten sawyers working over 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of processed timber might be produced in less than seven days.”
Owing to this speedy mechanical cutter, which converted timber to planks with virtually no human effort, the Dutch could construct ships faster than anyone else, which unleashed a century of Dutch naval, economic as well as cultural dominance across the continent and the globe.
The First Genuine Manufacturing Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. One component transformed the rotary movement to up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary movement into a lateral motion advancing the log to the blade. A geared mechanism moved the log ahead one precise increment each cycle.
“Each element was modest by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to combine these parts so they acted within a perfectly controlled order, cutting on every descending stroke and advancing with each return motion. It was an astonishingly clever use of basic components.”
A fact that brings us to today’s challenge. I’d like you to reinvent one of the basic ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism that turns circular movement into up-and-down motion. Your available these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the bars will fit snugly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so the components do not collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK time featuring the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please propose (less celebrated) candidates for the planet’s most impactful creation.
