Can You Crack It? That Forgotten Netherlands Creation Which Shaped our Modern World
One can find many candidates for the designation as “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to the mechanised sawmill invented by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, building a modest trading ship required around ten sawyers laboring for 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical amount of processed timber could be produced in less than a week.”
Owing to their rapid automated cutter, that converted logs into boards with almost no human effort, Dutch builders could construct ships faster compared to anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial and artistic supremacy in the continent and the world.
The First True Manufacturing Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues the writer, was “mankind’s initial true factory machine.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. A single part transformed its rotary motion into vertical action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary motion into a lateral motion advancing the log toward the blade. A ratchet system moved the log forward one precise increment per cycle.
“Every component seemed modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts in order that the machine acted in a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting with each downward motion and advancing on every upward motion. This constituted a remarkably intelligent application of fundamental parts.”
A fact that brings us up to the current challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent a key the basic ideas underpinning this historic machine.
Round and Up
Design a machine which converts rotary movement into up-and-down motion. You have these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the rods will fit snugly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so that the parts don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the answer.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please suggest (less celebrated) candidates for the planet’s greatest creation.
