Are You Able to Crack It? The Forgotten Dutch Invention Which Shaped our Modern Globe
One can find many contenders for the title of “planet’s most significant invention.” The circular axle. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a recent publication, however, that honor should go to the mechanised sawmill invented by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, building a simple merchant vessel required approximately 10 lumberjacks laboring for 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, an identical amount of processed timber might be manufactured within seven days.”
Owing to their rapid automated cutter, which converted timber to boards with almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could construct ships more quickly than anyone else, which sparked a century of Dutch maritime, economic as well as artistic supremacy across Europe and the world.
The First Genuine Industrial Device
The inventor's lumber mill, argues Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part transformed its rotary movement into up-and-down motion for the saw. A separate mechanism transformed the rotary movement into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber to the cutter. A ratchet system moved the log forward one precise increment each cycle.
“Each element seemed simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine these parts in order that the machine operated in a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting with each downward stroke and advancing with each upward motion. This constituted a remarkably intelligent application of basic components.”
A fact that leads us to the current challenge. The task is for you to reinvent a key the fundamental concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Construct a machine which converts circular motion into vertical action. You have these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a tube or housing through which one of the bars will fit snugly. (Assume you can put things on a base, so that the parts don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK with the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) contenders as the planet’s greatest creation.
