Can You Crack It? That Overlooked Netherlands Invention That Forged our Contemporary World
One can find numerous candidates for the title of “world’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to the automated timber mill invented through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, building a simple merchant vessel required approximately 10 sawyers laboring for three months,” writes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be produced within seven days.”
Owing to their speedy automated cutter, which turned logs into planks with virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders could construct ships faster compared to anyone else, an advantage that unleashed a century of Dutch naval, economic and artistic dominance in Europe and the world.
The Original Genuine Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s initial authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. A single part transformed its rotary motion into up-and-down motion for the saw. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the log ahead a measured step per cycle.
“Each element seemed modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine them so they operated in a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting on every descending stroke and advancing on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly intelligent use of fundamental parts.”
A fact that brings us up to the current challenge. The task is you to reimagine one of the basic concepts behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Design a machine that turns circular motion to vertical motion. Your available these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or housing into which a single the bars can slide perfectly. (Consider that you can mount components on a stand, so the parts do not collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time featuring the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) candidates as the world’s most impactful invention.
