Are You Able to Solve This? That Forgotten Netherlands Invention Which Shaped our Contemporary World
One can find many candidates to claim the title of “planet’s greatest innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a recent publication, though, that title belongs to the automated timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, constructing a simple merchant vessel required approximately ten sawyers working for 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-powered lumber mills, an identical amount of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Thanks to this speedy mechanical saw, that turned logs to boards using almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to build vessels faster than anyone else, which sparked a century of Netherlands maritime, financial as well as artistic dominance across the continent and the world.
The First True Manufacturing Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “mankind’s first true factory machine.” A windmill rotated a wheel. One component transformed its circular movement to up-and-down action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed the spinning motion into a lateral motion advancing the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism moved the log ahead a measured step each stroke.
“Every component seemed simple on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to integrate these parts so the machine operated in a precisely synchronized order, sawing on every descending motion and advancing with each return motion. It was a remarkably clever application of basic parts.”
Which leads us up to the current puzzle. I’d like for you to reimagine one of the fundamental ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Construct a machine which converts rotary movement to up-and-down action. Your available these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or housing into which one of the bars will fit perfectly. (Assume you can put things on a base, so that the components do not collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please suggest (less celebrated) contenders as the world’s most impactful invention.
