Can You Solve It? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation That Forged the Contemporary World
One can find numerous contenders for the title of “planet’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.
As per a new book, though, that honor should go to the mechanised timber mill conceived through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, constructing a simple merchant vessel necessitated approximately 10 sawyers working for 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber might be manufactured within seven days.”
Owing to this rapid mechanical cutter, that turned timber into boards using virtually no human effort, the Dutch could build vessels faster compared to any other nation, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial and cultural supremacy across the continent and the world.
The First True Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, represented “humanity’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part converted its rotary motion into vertical action for the cutting blade. Another component changed the spinning motion into a lateral movement advancing the log toward the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward one precise increment per cycle.
“Every component was modest on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to integrate them in order that the machine operated in a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing with each downward motion and advancing with each upward stroke. It was a remarkably clever application of fundamental parts.”
A fact that brings us to the current puzzle. I’d like you to reinvent a key the basic ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine which converts rotary motion into vertical motion. Your available these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or housing through which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Consider that you can put things on a stand, so that the components do not collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK time with the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please suggest (less celebrated) candidates as the planet’s greatest creation.
