Are You Able to Crack It? That Forgotten Netherlands Invention That Shaped our Contemporary Globe
One can find many candidates to claim the title of “planet’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
As per a recent publication, however, that honor should go to a mechanised sawmill conceived by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Prior to automated cutting, building a modest trading ship necessitated approximately ten lumberjacks working over three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of processed timber might be manufactured within a week.”
Owing to this rapid automated saw, which converted timber into planks using almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to construct ships faster compared to any other nation, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, economic as well as cultural supremacy across the continent and the world.
The First True Manufacturing Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues the writer, was “humanity’s initial authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. One component transformed its circular movement into up-and-down action to power the saw. Another component transformed the rotary movement into a lateral movement feeding the timber toward the cutter. A ratchet system moved the wood forward a measured step each cycle.
“Each element was simple on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts so the machine acted within a perfectly controlled order, sawing on every downward motion and moving with each upward stroke. It was an astonishingly clever application of fundamental components.”
Which brings us to the current challenge. The task is you to reinvent a key the fundamental concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism that turns circular motion into vertical motion. You have these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a tube or housing into which one of the rods can slide perfectly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a base, so that the parts don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please propose (less celebrated) contenders as the planet’s most impactful creation.
