Are You Able to Crack It? That Overlooked Netherlands Invention Which Shaped the Contemporary Globe
There are many contenders to claim the designation as “world’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a new book, though, that title belongs to the automated timber mill conceived by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel required approximately 10 lumberjacks laboring for three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven lumber mills, an identical amount of cut lumber might be manufactured in less than a week.”
Thanks to their rapid automated cutter, which turned timber into planks using almost no human effort, Dutch builders were able to construct ships more quickly than anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, economic and cultural dominance in Europe and the globe.
The Original Genuine Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, was “mankind’s first authentic industrial machine.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part transformed the circular motion to up-and-down action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the log toward the cutter. A ratchet system moved the log ahead one precise increment each cycle.
“Each element seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to combine these parts so the machine acted in a precisely synchronized order, cutting with each downward stroke and advancing with each upward motion. It was an astonishingly intelligent use of fundamental parts.”
A fact that leads us up to the current puzzle. The task is you to reinvent one of the basic ideas underpinning this historic invention.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism which converts circular movement to up-and-down motion. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a tube or housing into which one of the rods can slide perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to mount components on a stand, so the components do not collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to suggest (non obvious) contenders as the planet’s greatest creation.
