Are You Able to Crack It? The Forgotten Netherlands Invention Which Forged our Modern Globe
There are many candidates for the title of “planet’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a recent publication, however, that title belongs to the automated sawmill conceived by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, building a simple trading ship necessitated around 10 lumberjacks working for three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered sawmills, an identical amount of processed timber might be manufactured within seven days.”
Owing to their rapid automated cutter, which turned logs to boards using virtually no human effort, the Dutch could construct ships more quickly compared to anyone else, which sparked a century of Dutch maritime, financial as well as cultural dominance across the continent and the world.
The Original True Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues Dávila, was “mankind’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part transformed its rotary motion into vertical action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed the spinning motion into a sideway’s motion feeding the timber to the blade. A ratchet system moved the log ahead a measured step each cycle.
“Each element was modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to integrate these parts in order that they acted in a perfectly controlled order, cutting on every descending stroke and advancing with each return motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of basic components.”
A fact that leads us to the current puzzle. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the basic concepts behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism that turns rotary motion to up-and-down motion. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a tube or housing through which a single the bars will fit perfectly. (Assume you can put things on a stand, so the parts don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please suggest (less celebrated) contenders for the planet’s greatest creation.
