Can You Crack This? The Forgotten Netherlands Invention That Shaped the Contemporary Globe
One can find numerous candidates for the designation as “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a new book, however, that title belongs to a mechanised timber mill invented by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before automated sawing, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated around 10 lumberjacks working over 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered sawmills, an identical quantity of processed timber might be manufactured within seven days.”
Owing to this speedy automated saw, that turned timber into boards using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders could construct ships faster than any other nation, which sparked a century of Dutch maritime, economic and artistic supremacy in Europe and the globe.
The First Genuine Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues the writer, was “mankind’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part transformed the circular motion to up-and-down motion for the saw. A separate mechanism changed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the log to the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the wood forward a measured step each stroke.
“Every component was simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to integrate them so they acted within a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting with each downward stroke while moving on every upward stroke. It was an astonishingly intelligent use of fundamental components.”
Which brings us up to today’s challenge. The task is you to reimagine one of the fundamental concepts behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine that turns circular movement to vertical action. You have these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or sleeve through which one of the bars will fit perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to mount components on a base, so the parts don’t fall down.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) candidates for the world’s greatest invention.
