Are You Able to Crack This? The Overlooked Dutch Creation That Shaped our Modern World
One can find numerous candidates for the designation as “world’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a recent publication, though, that title should go to the mechanised timber mill conceived by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before automated sawing, constructing a simple merchant vessel required around 10 sawyers working for three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of processed timber could be manufactured within seven days.”
Thanks to this speedy mechanical cutter, which converted timber into boards using almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to build ships faster than any other nation, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, economic as well as cultural dominance across the continent and the globe.
The First Genuine Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “mankind’s initial authentic industrial machine.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. One component converted its circular movement to vertical action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s motion feeding the timber to the cutter. A ratchet system moved the log forward one precise increment per stroke.
“Each element seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts in order that the machine acted within a perfectly controlled order, cutting on every downward motion and moving on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly intelligent application of basic parts.”
Which leads us up to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reinvent a key the basic concepts behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Design a machine that turns rotary motion into vertical motion. Your available these components only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve through which a single the bars can slide snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so the components don’t collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please propose (less celebrated) contenders as the world’s most impactful creation.
