Are You Able to Crack It? The Overlooked Netherlands Creation Which Forged our Modern Globe
One can find many contenders to claim the designation as “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a new book, however, that honor belongs to a automated timber mill invented through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before automated sawing, building a modest merchant vessel required approximately ten sawyers laboring over 90 days,” writes the author. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, the same amount of cut lumber might be produced within a week.”
Owing to their rapid mechanical cutter, which turned logs to boards with virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to build ships faster compared to any other nation, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial as well as artistic supremacy in Europe and the world.
The Original True Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, argues the writer, represented “humanity’s initial authentic industrial machine.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part converted the circular movement to vertical motion to power the cutting blade. Another component transformed that same rotary movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the timber toward the blade. A ratchet system moved the wood forward a measured step per cycle.
“Every component seemed simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius was to integrate them in order that the machine operated in a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting with each descending motion while moving on every return motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of basic components.”
A fact that brings us to the current challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent a key the basic ideas behind this historic machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine that turns circular movement to vertical motion. You have these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or sleeve through which a single the bars will fit perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so the components don’t collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK time with the answer.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) candidates for the planet’s greatest invention.
