Are You Able to Crack It? The Forgotten Dutch Creation Which Forged the Contemporary Globe
There are numerous contenders for the title of “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a new book, though, that title should go to the automated sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, building a modest merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten lumberjacks working for 90 days,” writes the author. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, an identical quantity of cut lumber might be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Thanks to their speedy automated saw, which turned timber into boards with virtually no manual labor, the Dutch could build vessels faster than any other nation, an advantage that sparked a century of Dutch maritime, financial and artistic dominance across Europe and the world.
The Original Genuine Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, represented “humanity’s initial true factory apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. A single part converted the circular movement into vertical action for the saw. Another component changed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward one precise increment per cycle.
“Each element was modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to integrate them so they operated within a perfectly controlled order, sawing with each downward stroke while advancing with each upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent use of fundamental components.”
A fact that leads us to today’s puzzle. I’d like you to reimagine a key the fundamental concepts underpinning this historic machine.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism that turns rotary motion into up-and-down action. You have these items only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing through which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a stand, so that the parts don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please propose (less celebrated) contenders for the planet’s most impactful invention.
