Can You Solve This? That Forgotten Netherlands Creation Which Forged the Contemporary World
There are many candidates for the designation as “world’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
As per a new book, however, that honor should go to a mechanised timber mill invented through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated around ten sawyers working over 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber might be produced within a week.”
Owing to their speedy automated saw, that turned logs to planks using almost no manual labor, the Dutch could build vessels more quickly compared to anyone else, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, economic and artistic supremacy across the continent and the world.
The Original True Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues Dávila, represented “humanity’s first authentic industrial machine.” A windmill turned a wheel. One component transformed the rotary motion into vertical action to power the saw. Another component transformed the rotary motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the log to the blade. A ratchet system shifted the log forward one precise increment each cycle.
“Every component was modest by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to combine them in order that the machine acted in a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting on every downward motion and advancing on every upward motion. This constituted a remarkably intelligent application of basic components.”
Which brings us up to the current puzzle. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the fundamental concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Circular to Vertical
Design a mechanism which converts circular motion to vertical action. Your available these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or housing through which one of the rods will fit perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so that the parts do not fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK time with the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) contenders as the world’s most impactful creation.
