Can You Crack This? That Overlooked Netherlands Creation That Shaped our Modern Globe
There are many candidates to claim the designation as “world’s greatest innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, though, that title should go to a mechanised timber mill conceived by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, building a simple merchant vessel required approximately ten lumberjacks laboring for 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, an identical quantity of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Thanks to this speedy mechanical cutter, which converted logs to boards using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to construct ships faster than any other nation, an advantage that sparked a century of Netherlands maritime, financial and artistic supremacy across the continent and the world.
The First True Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, was “mankind’s first true industrial machine.” A windmill turned a wheel. One component converted its circular movement to up-and-down motion to power the saw. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary motion into a lateral motion advancing the log toward the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward one precise increment each cycle.
“Every component was simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts so they acted within a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting on every descending motion and moving on every upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent use of fundamental components.”
A fact that brings us to the current puzzle. The task is for you to reimagine a key the fundamental concepts behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a machine that turns circular motion into vertical action. Your available these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or sleeve into which a single the bars will fit perfectly. (Assume you can put things on a stand, so that the components do not collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time with the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates for the world’s greatest invention.
