Can You Solve It? That Forgotten Netherlands Creation That Forged the Modern World
There are numerous candidates for the title of “world’s most significant invention.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, though, that honor should go to a mechanised timber mill invented by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before automated cutting, constructing a modest trading ship required approximately 10 sawyers laboring over 90 days,” writes the author. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, the same amount of cut lumber could be produced within seven days.”
Thanks to this rapid mechanical saw, which converted logs into boards with almost no human effort, the Dutch could construct vessels more quickly compared to anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Dutch maritime, financial and cultural dominance in the continent and the globe.
The First Genuine Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a gear. One component transformed the circular movement to vertical action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed the spinning movement into a lateral movement feeding the timber to the blade. A ratchet system moved the log forward a measured step per cycle.
“Every component was modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine these parts in order that they acted within a precisely synchronized order, sawing on every downward motion while moving on every return stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of basic components.”
A fact that leads us to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reimagine one of the fundamental concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a mechanism that turns circular motion into up-and-down motion. Your available these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing into which a single the bars will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so that the parts do not fall down.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (less celebrated) candidates for the world’s most impactful creation.
