Are You Able to Crack This? The Forgotten Dutch Invention That Forged our Contemporary Globe
There are numerous contenders for the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a new book, however, that title belongs to the automated sawmill invented by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to automated cutting, constructing a simple merchant vessel necessitated around ten sawyers laboring for three months,” notes the author. “With wind-powered lumber mills, an identical quantity of processed timber might be produced within a week.”
Thanks to their rapid mechanical cutter, that converted timber to boards with virtually no human effort, Dutch builders could build vessels more quickly than anyone else, which sparked a century of Netherlands maritime, economic as well as artistic supremacy across the continent and the globe.
The Original True Industrial Device
The inventor's sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “mankind’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. A single part converted its rotary motion into vertical action to power the cutting blade. Another component transformed that same spinning motion into a sideway’s movement advancing the log to the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood ahead a measured step each stroke.
“Each element was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to integrate them in order that they acted within a precisely synchronized order, cutting with each descending motion while advancing with each return motion. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent use of fundamental parts.”
Which leads us to today’s challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic machine.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism that turns circular motion to vertical motion. Your available these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or housing through which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so that the parts do not fall down.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time with the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please suggest (non obvious) contenders for the world’s most impactful creation.
