Can You Crack This? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation That Shaped the Modern World
There are many contenders for the title of “world’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to the automated timber mill conceived by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before automated sawing, building a modest trading ship necessitated approximately ten lumberjacks working for 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, an identical quantity of cut lumber could be produced in less than seven days.”
Owing to their speedy automated saw, that turned timber to planks with almost no manual labor, the Dutch could build vessels more quickly than any other nation, which sparked one hundred years of Dutch maritime, financial and artistic supremacy across the continent and the globe.
The First True Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, argues the writer, was “humanity’s initial authentic factory machine.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. A single part converted its circular movement into up-and-down action to power the saw. A separate mechanism transformed the rotary movement into a lateral movement advancing the timber to the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the log ahead a measured step per stroke.
“Each element seemed modest by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to combine them so they operated in a precisely synchronized order, cutting with each descending stroke and moving with each return stroke. It was a remarkably clever use of basic components.”
Which leads us up to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reinvent one of the basic ideas underpinning this historic machine.
Round and Up
Design a machine that turns rotary movement to vertical action. You have these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Assume it is possible to mount components on a base, so the parts don’t collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK time featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) contenders as the planet’s greatest creation.