Can You Solve It? The Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Forged the Modern Globe
One can find numerous candidates to claim the designation as “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
As per a recent publication, however, that honor should go to a automated timber mill conceived through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.
“Before automated cutting, constructing a modest trading ship necessitated approximately ten lumberjacks working over three months,” writes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of processed timber might be produced in less than a week.”
Thanks to their speedy mechanical saw, that converted logs into planks with virtually no manual labor, the Dutch could construct vessels faster than anyone else, which unleashed a century of Netherlands maritime, economic as well as cultural dominance in the continent and the globe.
The First Genuine Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s first true industrial machine.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. A single part transformed its rotary movement to up-and-down action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same spinning motion into a lateral motion feeding the timber to the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward one precise increment per stroke.
“Each element seemed modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius was to integrate these parts in order that the machine operated in a perfectly controlled order, sawing on every descending motion while moving on every return stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of basic parts.”
A fact that leads us to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reinvent a key the fundamental concepts underpinning this historic machine.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism which converts rotary motion into up-and-down motion. You have these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or sleeve into which one of the rods can slide perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to mount components on a stand, so the components do not collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s greatest creation.
