Are You Able to Crack This? That Overlooked Dutch Creation That Shaped our Contemporary World
There are many contenders to claim the designation as “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, though, that honor should go to a mechanised sawmill conceived by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, building a simple merchant vessel required approximately ten sawyers laboring for three months,” writes the author. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same quantity of processed timber might be produced in less than a week.”
Owing to this speedy mechanical saw, which turned logs into planks with virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to construct ships faster than any other nation, an advantage that sparked a century of Netherlands naval, economic as well as artistic dominance in the continent and the world.
The First True Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues Dávila, represented “mankind’s initial authentic factory machine.” A windmill turned a wheel. One component converted its rotary motion into vertical action to power the cutting blade. Another component changed the rotary motion into a lateral motion advancing the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism moved the log ahead one precise increment per stroke.
“Every component seemed modest by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to integrate these parts so they acted within a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing on every descending motion and advancing on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever use of fundamental parts.”
A fact that leads us up to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reinvent one of the basic concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a machine that turns rotary movement to vertical motion. Your available these components 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. (Consider that it is possible to mount components on a stand, so the parts don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK with the answer.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please suggest (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s greatest creation.
