Are You Able to Crack It? That Overlooked Netherlands Creation That Shaped the Contemporary World
One can find many contenders to claim the designation as “world’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a new book, however, that title should go to the automated sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, constructing a modest trading ship required approximately ten sawyers laboring over three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same amount of processed timber might be manufactured within a week.”
Thanks to their rapid automated saw, which converted logs into planks using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders could build ships faster compared to any other nation, which unleashed one hundred years of Dutch maritime, economic as well as cultural dominance across Europe and the world.
The First Genuine Industrial Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. One component converted the rotary motion to vertical motion to power the saw. Another component transformed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the log to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the log ahead a measured step per stroke.
“Each element was simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to integrate these parts in order that the machine operated within a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every descending motion and moving with each return motion. This constituted a remarkably clever application of fundamental components.”
Which leads us up to the current puzzle. The task is you to reimagine one of the basic concepts behind this historic invention.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a mechanism that turns rotary motion to up-and-down action. Your available these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a tube or sleeve into which a single the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume it is possible to mount components on a stand, so the components do not collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the answer.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please suggest (less celebrated) contenders as the world’s greatest invention.
