Can You Crack This? The Overlooked Dutch Invention That Shaped our Contemporary World
One can find many contenders for the title of “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a recent publication, however, that title belongs to a automated timber mill invented by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, constructing a simple trading ship necessitated approximately ten lumberjacks laboring for 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of processed timber might be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Owing to this rapid automated cutter, which turned logs to boards using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders could build ships faster than anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, economic and cultural dominance in the continent and the world.
The Original True Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. One component converted the rotary movement to up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. Another component transformed that same rotary movement into a lateral motion advancing the log to the blade. A ratchet system shifted the log forward a measured step each stroke.
“Each element was modest on its own. The Dutchman’s genius was to integrate them so the machine acted within a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting on every descending motion and moving on every upward motion. It was a remarkably intelligent use of fundamental components.”
A fact that leads us to the current challenge. The task is for you to reinvent a key the basic ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Circular to Vertical
Design a mechanism that turns rotary movement into up-and-down motion. Your available these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or housing into which one of the bars will fit perfectly. (Assume it is possible to mount components on a base, so that the components do not collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK featuring the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) contenders as the planet’s greatest creation.
