Can You Solve This? The Overlooked Dutch Invention Which Forged our Contemporary Globe
There are numerous contenders for the designation as “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a new book, however, that honor should go to the mechanised timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to mechanised cutting, constructing a modest merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten sawyers laboring for 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical quantity of cut lumber could be produced in less than seven days.”
Thanks to this speedy automated cutter, which converted timber into boards with almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct vessels faster than anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Dutch maritime, economic and cultural dominance across the continent and the world.
The First True Industrial Device
The inventor's sawmill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s initial true factory apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part converted its circular movement to vertical action for the saw. Another component transformed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the wood ahead one precise increment each stroke.
“Each element was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts so they acted within a perfectly controlled order, cutting on every downward motion and advancing on every return motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of basic components.”
Which brings us up to the current challenge. The task is for you to reinvent a key the basic ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a mechanism which converts rotary movement to vertical action. Your available these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or sleeve through which a single the bars can slide snugly. (Assume it is possible to mount components on a base, so that the components do not collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK with the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) contenders for the planet’s greatest creation.
