Can You Crack It? The Forgotten Dutch Invention Which Forged our Modern World
There are numerous contenders for the title of “world’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a new book, though, that title should go to a mechanised timber mill conceived through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel necessitated around ten sawyers working for 90 days,” writes the author. “Using wind-powered sawmills, the same amount of cut lumber might be manufactured within seven days.”
Thanks to their rapid mechanical cutter, that turned timber into boards using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders could build vessels more quickly compared to anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, economic and artistic supremacy across the continent and the world.
The First True Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends the writer, represented “mankind’s first true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part converted the rotary movement to vertical action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed the spinning movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the log to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward a measured step each stroke.
“Every component was simple on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to integrate them so they operated within a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting on every descending motion while advancing on every upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of fundamental parts.”
A fact that brings us up to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reimagine one of the fundamental concepts behind this historic machine.
Round and Up
Construct a machine which converts circular movement to up-and-down action. You have these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or sleeve through which a single the bars will fit perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so the components do not collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please propose (non obvious) contenders for the world’s greatest invention.
