Can You Solve It? The Overlooked Netherlands Creation That Shaped our Modern World
One can find many candidates for the title of “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a recent publication, however, that title should go to the mechanised sawmill conceived by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel required approximately 10 lumberjacks working for three months,” notes the author. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, the same amount of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Owing to this rapid automated cutter, that converted logs into boards using virtually no human effort, the Dutch could construct ships more quickly than any other nation, which unleashed a century of Netherlands maritime, financial and cultural supremacy in Europe and the world.
The First Genuine Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues Dávila, was “humanity’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a gear. A single part converted its circular movement into up-and-down motion for the cutting blade. Another component changed that same spinning motion into a lateral motion advancing the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward a measured step per stroke.
“Every component was modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to integrate these parts so they acted in a perfectly controlled order, cutting with each downward motion and moving with each upward stroke. This constituted a remarkably clever use of basic components.”
A fact that leads us up to the current puzzle. I’d like you to reinvent one of the fundamental concepts behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a mechanism that turns rotary motion into vertical motion. You have these components only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or sleeve into which a single the rods will fit perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a stand, so the components don’t collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK time featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please suggest (less celebrated) contenders as the planet’s greatest invention.