Are You Able to Solve This? That Overlooked Dutch Invention That Forged the Contemporary Globe
There are many candidates for the title of “world’s greatest innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.
As per a new book, however, that title belongs to a automated sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten lumberjacks laboring over three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Thanks to this speedy automated cutter, that turned logs into boards with almost no human effort, Dutch builders could build ships more quickly than any other nation, which unleashed one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial and artistic supremacy across Europe and the globe.
The First True Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. One component transformed its rotary motion to up-and-down motion for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed the rotary motion into a sideway’s movement advancing the log to the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward a measured step each cycle.
“Each element seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to integrate them so they operated within a perfectly controlled order, sawing on every descending stroke and moving on every upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of basic components.”
Which brings us up to today’s puzzle. The task is you to reinvent a key the fundamental concepts behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Design a machine that turns circular movement into up-and-down motion. Your available these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so the parts don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) candidates as the planet’s greatest creation.
