Can You Solve This? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation Which Shaped our Modern Globe
There are numerous candidates to claim the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
According to a new book, however, that honor belongs to the mechanised sawmill invented by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Prior to automated cutting, building a modest merchant vessel required approximately ten lumberjacks laboring over 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven sawmills, the same amount of cut lumber might be manufactured within a week.”
Thanks to this speedy mechanical saw, which converted timber to boards using almost no manual labor, the Dutch could construct ships more quickly than anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Netherlands naval, economic and cultural supremacy in Europe and the globe.
The Original Genuine Industrial Device
The inventor's lumber mill, argues the writer, was “humanity’s initial true factory machine.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part converted its rotary motion to vertical motion to power the cutting blade. Another component changed the rotary motion into a lateral movement advancing the timber toward the blade. A ratchet system moved the wood ahead one precise increment each stroke.
“Each element seemed modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine them so the machine operated in a perfectly controlled order, cutting with each downward stroke and moving with each upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of fundamental components.”
A fact that leads us to the current challenge. The task is for you to reinvent a key the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a mechanism which converts circular motion to vertical motion. Your available these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or housing through which one of the bars will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can mount components on a stand, so that the parts don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please suggest (less celebrated) candidates as the world’s most impactful creation.
