Can You Crack This? That Overlooked Dutch Invention Which Shaped our Modern World
One can find many candidates to claim the title of “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to a mechanised timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before automated cutting, constructing a simple merchant vessel required approximately ten sawyers working over 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber might be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Thanks to their rapid automated saw, which converted logs to planks using virtually no human effort, Dutch builders were able to build vessels more quickly than anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Dutch maritime, financial as well as cultural supremacy in Europe and the globe.
The First True Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues Dávila, was “mankind’s first authentic factory machine.” A windmill rotated a wheel. One component transformed the circular motion to up-and-down motion for the saw. Another component transformed the rotary movement into a lateral movement feeding the timber to the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the wood ahead a measured step each stroke.
“Every component seemed simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine them in order that they acted in a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing with each downward stroke while advancing on every return stroke. It was an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental parts.”
Which brings us up to today’s puzzle. I’d like you to reimagine one of the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic invention.
Circular to Vertical
Design a mechanism that turns circular movement to vertical action. You have these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or housing through which a single the bars will fit snugly. (Assume you can mount components on a stand, so that the parts don’t fall down.)
The solution returns later today UK time featuring the answer.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) candidates for the world’s most impactful invention.
