One can find many contenders to claim the title of “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a new book, however, that title belongs to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Prior to automated cutting, building a modest merchant vessel necessitated around 10 lumberjacks laboring for three months,” writes the author. “Using wind-driven sawmills, the same amount of processed timber could be produced within seven days.”
Thanks to their rapid automated cutter, that converted timber to planks using almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to build ships more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Dutch naval, economic as well as artistic dominance in Europe and the globe.
The First Genuine Industrial Machine
The inventor's sawmill, argues the writer, represented “humanity’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. One component transformed the rotary motion to vertical motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed the spinning movement into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber to the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the wood forward a measured step per cycle.
“Every component was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to combine these parts so they operated in a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting on every downward stroke and moving with each return motion. It was an astonishingly intelligent use of fundamental components.”
A fact that leads us to today’s challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent a key the basic concepts behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Design a machine that turns circular motion to vertical motion. Your available these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing through which a single the rods will fit perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so that the parts do not collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK with the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please propose (less celebrated) candidates as the planet’s most impactful invention.
