Are You Able to Solve It? That Overlooked Netherlands Creation Which Shaped the Contemporary Globe
There are many candidates for the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to a mechanised sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, constructing a simple merchant vessel necessitated around 10 lumberjacks working over 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than a week.”
Thanks to their speedy automated cutter, that converted logs into planks using almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could construct ships more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that sparked a century of Netherlands naval, financial as well as cultural dominance in the continent and the globe.
The Original Genuine Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues the writer, represented “humanity’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a gear. A single part transformed its rotary motion into up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. Another component changed that same rotary movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the timber to the blade. A ratchet system shifted the log ahead one precise increment each stroke.
“Every component seemed modest by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to integrate these parts so they acted in a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting with each downward motion while advancing on every return motion. This constituted a remarkably intelligent application of basic parts.”
A fact that leads us to today’s puzzle. The task is for you to reinvent one of the basic concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine that turns circular motion to vertical motion. You have these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or sleeve through which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a base, so that the parts do not collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK with the answer.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates for the world’s most impactful creation.
