Are You Able to Crack It? The Overlooked Netherlands Invention Which Shaped the Contemporary World
One can find many candidates to claim the title of “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, however, that title belongs to the automated sawmill conceived by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before automated cutting, constructing a simple trading ship required approximately 10 lumberjacks laboring for three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same quantity of processed timber could be produced within seven days.”
Owing to this rapid mechanical cutter, which turned logs to boards using almost no human effort, Dutch builders could build ships faster compared to anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, economic as well as artistic supremacy across Europe and the world.
The First True Manufacturing Device
The inventor's sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial true industrial machine.” A windmill turned a wheel. One component converted its rotary movement to vertical action for the cutting blade. Another component transformed that same rotary motion into a lateral movement feeding the log toward the blade. A ratchet system shifted the log ahead one precise increment each cycle.
“Every component seemed simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine them in order that they operated in a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting with each downward motion while advancing with each return stroke. It was a remarkably clever use of fundamental components.”
A fact that leads us up to the current puzzle. The task is for you to reimagine a key the fundamental concepts behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism which converts circular movement into up-and-down action. Your available these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a tube or housing into which one of the rods will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so the parts don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please propose (less celebrated) contenders for the planet’s greatest creation.
