Can You Crack It? That Overlooked Netherlands Invention That Forged our Modern World
One can find many contenders for the title of “world’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a new book, though, that honor belongs to the automated sawmill invented through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, building a modest merchant vessel required approximately 10 sawyers working over three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered sawmills, an identical quantity of cut lumber could be produced in less than seven days.”
Thanks to this speedy mechanical cutter, that turned logs to boards with virtually no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct vessels faster compared to any other nation, which sparked a century of Dutch maritime, financial and artistic dominance in Europe and the globe.
The Original Genuine Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s first true industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. One component transformed the rotary motion to vertical motion to power the cutting blade. Another component changed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the log to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the log forward one precise increment each cycle.
“Every component seemed modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius was to combine these parts so the machine operated in a precisely synchronized order, sawing with each downward motion while moving with each return motion. It was an astonishingly intelligent application of basic components.”
A fact that leads us up to today’s puzzle. The task is for you to reimagine a key the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic machine.
Round and Up
Construct a machine which converts rotary motion into up-and-down motion. You have these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or sleeve into which a single the bars can slide perfectly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so that the parts don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please suggest (non obvious) contenders as the world’s most impactful creation.
