Can You Solve This? That Forgotten Dutch Creation Which Forged the Contemporary World
There are numerous contenders for the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a recent publication, though, that honor should go to a mechanised timber mill conceived by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, building a simple merchant vessel required approximately 10 lumberjacks working over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, an identical amount of cut lumber might be produced in less than a week.”
Owing to their speedy mechanical cutter, which converted logs to boards with almost no manual labor, the Dutch could build vessels faster than any other nation, which unleashed a century of Netherlands maritime, financial and artistic dominance across the continent and the globe.
The First True Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a gear. A single part converted its circular motion to up-and-down motion for the saw. Another component transformed that same spinning motion into a lateral motion feeding the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the log ahead a measured step each cycle.
“Every component seemed modest on its own. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to combine these parts so they operated within a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting with each descending motion and advancing with each upward motion. It was a remarkably clever use of basic parts.”
Which brings us up to the current puzzle. I’d like for you to reinvent a key the basic ideas underpinning this historic machine.
Round and Up
Construct a machine which converts circular motion to vertical motion. You have these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or housing into which one of the rods will fit snugly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a stand, so the parts do not collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please suggest (non obvious) contenders for the world’s most impactful invention.
