Are You Able to Solve It? That Overlooked Netherlands Invention That Forged the Contemporary Globe
One can find many candidates for the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, however, that title should go to a automated sawmill conceived by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten sawyers working over three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, the same quantity of processed timber could be manufactured in less than a week.”
Owing to their rapid automated cutter, which converted timber into planks using almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct ships more quickly than anyone else, which sparked a century of Netherlands naval, economic as well as artistic dominance in Europe and the globe.
The First True Industrial Machine
The inventor's sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “mankind’s first authentic industrial machine.” A windmill rotated a wheel. A single part transformed its circular motion into up-and-down motion for the saw. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary motion into a lateral motion feeding the log to the cutter. A ratchet system moved the log ahead one precise increment per cycle.
“Each element was simple on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to combine these parts in order that they acted in a precisely synchronized order, sawing with each downward stroke and moving with each upward stroke. It was an astonishingly clever application of fundamental parts.”
Which brings us up to today’s puzzle. I’d like you to reinvent a key the basic ideas underpinning this historic invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism that turns circular motion to up-and-down motion. You have these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or housing through which a single the bars will fit snugly. (Assume it is possible to mount components on a stand, so that the components do not collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK time featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please suggest (less celebrated) candidates for the planet’s greatest invention.
