Are You Able to Crack This? The Forgotten Netherlands Invention That Shaped our Contemporary World
There are numerous contenders to claim the title of “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a new book, however, that honor belongs to a mechanised timber mill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, constructing a modest trading ship required around 10 sawyers working over 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same amount of processed timber could be manufactured in less than a week.”
Thanks to their rapid mechanical cutter, which converted logs into planks using almost no human effort, the Dutch could construct ships faster compared to any other nation, which sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial as well as cultural dominance in the continent and the world.
The First True Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part transformed the rotary motion into up-and-down action to power the saw. Another component changed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s motion advancing the timber to the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood forward a measured step per cycle.
“Each element seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to integrate them in order that the machine acted within a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting on every downward motion while advancing with each return motion. It was an astonishingly clever use of fundamental parts.”
Which brings us up to the current puzzle. I’d like you to reinvent one of the fundamental concepts behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism which converts rotary motion into up-and-down motion. You have these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve through which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume it is possible to mount components on a stand, so the components don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK time with the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (less celebrated) candidates as the world’s greatest creation.
