Can You Solve This? The Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Shaped the Contemporary Globe
One can find numerous contenders for the designation as “world’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to the automated sawmill conceived by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, building a modest merchant vessel necessitated approximately 10 lumberjacks working for three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same amount of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than a week.”
Thanks to this rapid mechanical saw, which turned logs into boards using virtually no human effort, the Dutch were able to build ships more quickly than any other nation, an advantage that sparked a century of Dutch maritime, economic as well as cultural dominance in the continent and the world.
The Original True Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues Dávila, was “humanity’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part transformed the circular motion into vertical motion to power the cutting blade. Another component changed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s motion feeding the timber to the cutter. A ratchet system moved the log forward one precise increment each stroke.
“Every component was modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to combine these parts in order that they operated in a perfectly controlled order, sawing on every descending stroke while moving with each upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of fundamental components.”
A fact that brings us up to today’s challenge. The task is you to reimagine one of the basic ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Circular to Vertical
Design a mechanism that turns rotary motion into up-and-down action. You have these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or sleeve through which one of the rods can slide perfectly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a base, so that the components do not collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK time featuring the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please propose (non obvious) contenders as the world’s greatest invention.
