Are You Able to Solve This? That Forgotten Netherlands Creation That Shaped our Contemporary World
One can find numerous contenders to claim the designation as “world’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a new book, though, that title belongs to the automated sawmill invented by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, building a modest merchant vessel necessitated around 10 sawyers laboring for three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered sawmills, an identical quantity of processed timber could be produced in less than seven days.”
Owing to this rapid mechanical cutter, which converted timber to planks using almost no human effort, the Dutch could build vessels more quickly compared to anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Netherlands naval, economic as well as artistic dominance across Europe and the globe.
The Original Genuine Manufacturing Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends the writer, was “mankind’s initial authentic factory machine.” A windmill turned a gear. One component converted its circular motion to vertical action for the cutting blade. Another component changed the rotary motion into a sideway’s movement advancing the timber toward the blade. A ratchet system moved the log forward one precise increment each stroke.
“Every component was modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to integrate these parts so the machine acted within a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting on every descending motion while moving on every upward stroke. It was an astonishingly clever use of basic components.”
A fact that brings us up to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reimagine a key the fundamental ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism that turns circular movement to up-and-down motion. You have these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or housing into which one of the bars will fit snugly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so that the parts don’t fall down.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time with the answer.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to propose (less celebrated) contenders as the world’s greatest creation.
