Are You Able to Solve This? The Overlooked Netherlands Creation Which Forged the Contemporary World
One can find numerous contenders to claim the designation as “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The printing press. 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.
“Prior to automated cutting, constructing a simple merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten sawyers working over 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-powered lumber mills, an identical amount of processed timber could be manufactured within a week.”
Thanks to their rapid automated saw, that converted timber into planks with virtually no manual labor, the Dutch were able to build vessels faster compared to any other nation, an advantage that sparked a century of Dutch maritime, financial as well as artistic supremacy across Europe and the world.
The First True Manufacturing Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends the writer, represented “mankind’s first authentic factory machine.” A windmill rotated a gear. One component transformed its rotary movement into vertical action to power the cutting blade. Another component changed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the log to the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward one precise increment each cycle.
“Each element was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to integrate them so they acted in a perfectly controlled order, cutting with each downward stroke and advancing with each return stroke. This constituted a remarkably intelligent use of basic parts.”
A fact that leads us up to today’s challenge. The task is you to reimagine a key the fundamental concepts behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a mechanism which converts circular motion to vertical motion. Your available these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or housing through which one of the bars will fit snugly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a base, so the components don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please propose (non obvious) candidates as the world’s most impactful creation.
