Are You Able to Solve This? The Forgotten Netherlands Invention Which Shaped our Contemporary Globe
One can find numerous candidates to claim the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, however, that title should go to the mechanised timber mill conceived through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Prior to automated cutting, constructing a modest trading ship required around ten lumberjacks working over three months,” writes the author. “Using wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber might be manufactured within seven days.”
Owing to their rapid automated cutter, that converted timber into planks with almost no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to construct vessels more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that unleashed a century of Dutch maritime, economic and cultural dominance across Europe and the world.
The First Genuine Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's sawmill, contends the writer, was “mankind’s first authentic industrial machine.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part transformed its circular movement into up-and-down motion for the saw. Another component changed the spinning motion into a lateral motion feeding the log to the cutter. A ratchet system moved the log forward a measured step each stroke.
“Each element was modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine these parts in order that the machine acted in a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting with each descending motion while advancing with each upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of basic components.”
A fact that brings us to the current challenge. The task is you to reimagine one of the basic concepts behind this historic invention.
Circular to Vertical
Design a mechanism that turns circular motion to vertical motion. Your available these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or sleeve into which a single the bars can slide snugly. (Consider that you can put things on a stand, so the parts don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK featuring the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) contenders for the planet’s most impactful invention.
