Can You Crack This? The Overlooked Netherlands Invention That Forged the Modern World
One can find many contenders for the designation as “world’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to a automated sawmill invented by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before automated cutting, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated around ten lumberjacks working for 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven sawmills, the same amount of cut lumber might be manufactured within a week.”
Owing to their rapid automated saw, that turned timber into planks with virtually no human effort, the Dutch could build vessels faster compared to any other nation, which unleashed a century of Dutch naval, financial and cultural supremacy across the continent and the world.
The Original Genuine Manufacturing Device
The inventor's sawmill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s initial true industrial machine.” A windmill turned a gear. One component converted the rotary movement into vertical motion for the cutting blade. Another component changed the rotary movement into a lateral movement advancing the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward one precise increment per stroke.
“Every component was simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts in order that they acted within a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting on every descending stroke while advancing on every return stroke. This constituted a remarkably clever use of fundamental parts.”
Which leads us to today’s challenge. I’d like for you to reimagine a key the basic concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism which converts circular motion into up-and-down action. Your available these components only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing through which a single the bars can slide snugly. (Assume you can put things on a base, so that the components do not collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK with the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) candidates as the planet’s most impactful creation.