Are You Able to Solve It? The Forgotten Dutch Invention Which Shaped our Contemporary World
One can find many candidates for the title of “planet’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.
As per a new book, though, that honor should go to the mechanised timber mill conceived through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before automated cutting, constructing a simple merchant vessel required around 10 sawyers laboring for three months,” writes the author. “Using wind-powered sawmills, the same amount of processed timber might be manufactured within seven days.”
Thanks to their speedy mechanical saw, which converted logs to planks using almost no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to build ships faster compared to anyone else, an advantage that unleashed a century of Dutch maritime, economic as well as cultural supremacy in the continent and the globe.
The Original Genuine Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, was “mankind’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part transformed the circular movement into vertical motion for the cutting blade. Another component transformed the spinning motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the log to the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood ahead one precise increment each stroke.
“Every component seemed simple on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to integrate them in order that they operated in a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing with each descending motion while advancing with each return motion. It was an astonishingly intelligent use of fundamental components.”
A fact that brings us up to the current challenge. The task is for you to reimagine a key the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine that turns circular movement into up-and-down action. You have these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or housing into which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a stand, so the parts don’t collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK with the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please propose (non obvious) contenders for the world’s most impactful invention.
