Are You Able to Solve This? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation Which Shaped the Contemporary Globe
One can find many candidates for the title of “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a recent publication, however, that title belongs to the automated timber mill conceived through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, building a modest trading ship required approximately ten lumberjacks laboring over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, an identical amount of cut lumber might be manufactured in less than a week.”
Thanks to this rapid automated cutter, which converted timber to planks with almost no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to build vessels faster than anyone else, an advantage that unleashed a century of Dutch maritime, financial and cultural dominance in the continent and the world.
The Original Genuine Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s first true factory apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. One component transformed the circular movement into up-and-down action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed the spinning movement into a lateral movement advancing the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the wood forward a measured step per cycle.
“Every component seemed modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to combine them in order that the machine operated within a precisely synchronized order, cutting with each descending stroke and advancing on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever use of fundamental parts.”
Which leads us to today’s puzzle. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the basic concepts underpinning this historic invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism that turns circular movement into up-and-down action. Your available these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or housing through which one of the bars will fit perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a stand, so that the components do not fall down.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please suggest (less celebrated) contenders for the planet’s greatest creation.
