Are You Able to Solve This? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation That Forged our Contemporary Globe
One can find numerous candidates for the title of “world’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, however, that honor should go to a mechanised timber mill conceived by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to automated cutting, constructing a modest merchant vessel required around ten lumberjacks laboring over three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, an identical amount of cut lumber might be produced in less than a week.”
Thanks to this rapid mechanical cutter, which turned timber to boards with virtually no human effort, Dutch builders were able to build ships faster than anyone else, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, economic and cultural supremacy in the continent and the globe.
The First True Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s first true factory apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part transformed the circular movement into up-and-down motion for the saw. Another component changed that same spinning motion into a lateral motion feeding the log to the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood ahead a measured step per cycle.
“Each element was modest on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to integrate these parts in order that they operated in a perfectly controlled order, sawing on every downward motion and advancing with each upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of basic parts.”
Which leads us up to today’s challenge. The task is you to reinvent a key the fundamental concepts underpinning this historic machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine that turns circular motion to vertical motion. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve through which one of the rods will fit snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a stand, so that the components do not fall down.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please suggest (non obvious) candidates as the world’s most impactful invention.
