Are You Able to Solve It? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation Which Forged our Contemporary World
There are many candidates for the title of “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to the automated sawmill conceived by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before automated cutting, building a simple merchant vessel required approximately 10 sawyers working over three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber might be manufactured within seven days.”
Owing to their rapid automated saw, that converted logs to planks with almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could build vessels faster compared to anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Dutch maritime, economic as well as artistic supremacy across Europe and the globe.
The Original Genuine Manufacturing Device
The inventor's sawmill, argues the writer, was “mankind’s initial authentic industrial machine.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part transformed the rotary movement to up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed that same rotary movement into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber toward the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the wood ahead a measured step each cycle.
“Every component was simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine them so the machine acted within a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing with each descending stroke while moving on every return motion. This constituted a remarkably clever use of fundamental components.”
Which brings us up to today’s puzzle. I’d like for you to reimagine a key the fundamental concepts underpinning this historic machine.
Round and Up
Design a machine that turns circular movement to up-and-down motion. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the bars will fit snugly. (Assume you can put things on a stand, so that the parts don’t collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time with the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please suggest (non obvious) candidates for the planet’s greatest invention.
