Can You Crack This? That Forgotten Dutch Creation Which Shaped our Contemporary Globe
One can find many candidates for the designation as “world’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
According to a new book, though, that honor should go to a mechanised timber mill conceived through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, constructing a simple merchant vessel necessitated approximately 10 sawyers working for 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, the same quantity of processed timber might be produced within a week.”
Owing to their speedy automated saw, that converted logs to boards with virtually no human effort, the Dutch could construct ships faster than anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial and artistic supremacy in Europe and the world.
The First True Industrial Machine
The inventor's sawmill, contends the writer, represented “mankind’s initial authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part transformed its circular movement into up-and-down action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same spinning motion into a lateral motion advancing the log toward the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the log ahead one precise increment per stroke.
“Every component was modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to integrate these parts in order that they operated within a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing with each descending stroke and moving on every upward motion. It was a remarkably intelligent use of fundamental parts.”
Which brings us up to the current puzzle. The task is you to reimagine a key the basic ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Construct a machine which converts circular motion to up-and-down action. You have these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve through which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so the parts do not fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK with the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to propose (less celebrated) contenders as the world’s most impactful creation.