Are You Able to Solve This? The Overlooked Dutch Invention Which Shaped our Contemporary World
There are many candidates to claim the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, though, that honor should go to a mechanised sawmill conceived by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, constructing a modest merchant vessel necessitated approximately 10 sawyers laboring over 90 days,” notes the author. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, the same amount of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Thanks to their rapid mechanical saw, that converted logs to planks using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to build ships more quickly compared to any other nation, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, economic and cultural dominance across the continent and the globe.
The Original True Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s initial authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. One component transformed its rotary motion to up-and-down action for the cutting blade. Another component transformed the rotary movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the log to the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood forward a measured step each cycle.
“Every component was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius was to integrate these parts so the machine acted within a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing with each descending motion while advancing on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever use of fundamental parts.”
Which leads us up to today’s puzzle. I’d like for you to reimagine a key the fundamental concepts behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Design a machine which converts circular motion into up-and-down action. You have these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a tube or sleeve through which a single the rods will fit snugly. (Consider that you can put things on a stand, so that the parts do not fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (less celebrated) contenders for the world’s greatest invention.
