Are You Able to Solve It? The Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Forged our Contemporary World
One can find many candidates to claim the title of “world’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, though, that honor should go to the mechanised sawmill conceived by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, building a modest merchant vessel necessitated around 10 sawyers laboring for three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, an identical amount of processed timber might be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Thanks to their rapid automated cutter, that converted logs into boards with almost no human effort, Dutch builders were able to construct ships faster compared to any other nation, which unleashed a century of Dutch maritime, economic and artistic dominance across Europe and the globe.
The First Genuine Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends the writer, represented “mankind’s initial true factory machine.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. One component transformed its circular movement to up-and-down motion to power the saw. Another component transformed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the wood forward a measured step each cycle.
“Every component seemed simple on its own. The Dutchman’s genius was to integrate them so they operated within a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing with each descending stroke while moving with each upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of basic components.”
Which leads us up to today’s puzzle. I’d like you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas behind this historic invention.
Round and Up
Construct a machine that turns rotary motion to up-and-down action. Your available these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or housing into which one of the bars will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can mount components on a stand, so the parts do not collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK time with the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates as the planet’s greatest invention.
