Can You Solve It? That Overlooked Dutch Invention Which Forged the Contemporary Globe
There are many candidates to claim the designation as “world’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, though, that title should go to the mechanised sawmill conceived by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, building a simple trading ship required around 10 sawyers laboring over three months,” writes the author. “Using wind-driven sawmills, the same amount of processed timber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Thanks to this rapid mechanical saw, which converted logs into boards using virtually no manual labor, the Dutch could construct ships faster than anyone else, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Dutch maritime, economic as well as cultural dominance in the continent and the world.
The First True Industrial Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, argues Dávila, was “humanity’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. One component converted its rotary motion into vertical motion for the saw. Another component transformed that same rotary motion into a lateral movement advancing the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the wood forward a measured step each cycle.
“Every component seemed simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine these parts in order that they acted within a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing with each downward motion while moving on every return stroke. This constituted a remarkably clever use of basic parts.”
A fact that brings us up to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reinvent a key the basic concepts underpinning this historic invention.
Round and Up
Design a machine which converts circular motion to up-and-down motion. Your available these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or housing through which a single the bars can slide snugly. (Consider that it is possible to mount components on a stand, so the components don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK time featuring the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) candidates for the planet’s greatest creation.
