Can You Solve This? That Overlooked Dutch Invention Which Shaped the Modern World
One can find many candidates for the designation as “planet’s most significant invention.” The circular axle. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to a mechanised timber mill conceived by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before automated sawing, constructing a modest trading ship necessitated around 10 sawyers laboring for three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered sawmills, the same amount of processed timber might be produced in less than seven days.”
Owing to their rapid automated saw, which turned logs into planks with virtually no human effort, Dutch builders could construct ships faster than anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial and cultural dominance across Europe and the world.
The First True Industrial Device
The inventor's sawmill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. A single part converted its rotary movement to vertical motion for the cutting blade. Another component changed that same spinning movement into a lateral motion advancing the log to the blade. A geared mechanism moved the log forward a measured step each stroke.
“Every component was modest on its own. The Dutchman’s genius was to combine them in order that the machine acted within a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing with each descending motion while moving with each return stroke. It was an astonishingly clever application of basic components.”
A fact that brings us to today’s puzzle. The task is you to reinvent one of the basic ideas behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Circular to Vertical
Design a mechanism which converts circular motion to vertical motion. You have these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a tube or housing through which a single the rods can slide snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a stand, so that the parts do not collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK with the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) candidates for the planet’s most impactful invention.
