Are You Able to Solve This? That Forgotten Dutch Invention That Shaped our Contemporary Globe
There are numerous contenders for the designation as “world’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a new book, however, that honor should go to the mechanised sawmill conceived through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated around 10 sawyers working over 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of processed timber could be produced within seven days.”
Thanks to this speedy mechanical saw, that converted timber to planks with virtually no human effort, the Dutch were able to build ships more quickly compared to any other nation, an advantage that sparked a century of Dutch maritime, economic as well as artistic supremacy in Europe and the globe.
The First Genuine Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends the writer, represented “humanity’s first true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a gear. A single part transformed the rotary movement into up-and-down action to power the saw. Another component changed that same rotary movement into a sideway’s motion advancing the log toward the cutter. A ratchet system moved the log forward one precise increment per cycle.
“Every component seemed modest on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to integrate these parts so they operated in a precisely synchronized order, sawing with each descending motion while advancing with each upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of basic parts.”
Which leads us up to the current challenge. I’d like you to reimagine one of the basic concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism that turns circular movement to up-and-down action. You have these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve into which a single the bars will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so that the parts don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK featuring the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please suggest (less celebrated) contenders as the planet’s greatest invention.