Can You Crack It? That Overlooked Dutch Creation That Shaped the Modern World
One can find numerous candidates for the title of “world’s greatest innovation.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor.
As per a recent publication, though, that title should go to the mechanised sawmill invented through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel required around ten lumberjacks working for 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber might be manufactured in less than a week.”
Owing to this rapid automated cutter, which converted timber into planks using almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct ships faster compared to any other nation, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, economic and cultural dominance in Europe and the globe.
The First True Manufacturing Device
The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “mankind’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. A single part transformed the circular movement into up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. Another component changed that same rotary motion into a lateral movement feeding the log to the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward one precise increment per stroke.
“Every component was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to combine these parts so they acted in a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting on every downward stroke and advancing on every upward stroke. It was an astonishingly clever use of basic components.”
A fact that brings us up to today’s puzzle. The task is for you to reimagine a key the fundamental ideas behind this historic machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine that turns rotary movement into vertical motion. Your available these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or housing into which one of the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so the parts don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK time featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) contenders as the world’s most impactful invention.
