Are You Able to Solve This? That Overlooked Netherlands Invention That Shaped our Modern Globe
One can find many contenders for the title of “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, though, that title belongs to the automated timber mill conceived through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, constructing a simple merchant vessel required approximately ten lumberjacks laboring over three months,” writes the author. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of processed timber might be manufactured in less than a week.”
Thanks to this speedy automated saw, which turned logs to planks using virtually no human effort, the Dutch were able to build vessels faster compared to any other nation, which sparked a century of Netherlands maritime, financial and artistic dominance across Europe and the globe.
The First Genuine Industrial Device
The inventor's sawmill, contends the writer, represented “mankind’s first true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. A single part transformed the rotary movement into up-and-down action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same spinning motion into a lateral motion advancing the timber to the blade. A ratchet system moved the wood forward a measured step each cycle.
“Each element was modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to integrate these parts in order that they acted in a perfectly controlled order, cutting on every descending motion and moving with each return motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of fundamental parts.”
Which brings us to today’s puzzle. The task is for you to reimagine one of the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine which converts circular motion into up-and-down action. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or sleeve through which a single the rods can slide snugly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so that the components do not fall down.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time with the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) candidates as the world’s greatest invention.
