Can You Crack It? That Overlooked Dutch Creation That Forged the Modern World
One can find many candidates for the title of “world’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to a mechanised sawmill conceived by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before automated cutting, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated approximately 10 sawyers laboring for three months,” writes the author. “With wind-powered lumber mills, an identical amount of processed timber could be manufactured within seven days.”
Thanks to their rapid mechanical saw, that converted timber to planks with virtually no manual labor, the Dutch were able to build vessels faster compared to any other nation, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, economic as well as artistic dominance across Europe and the world.
The First Genuine Manufacturing Device
The inventor's lumber mill, argues Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial true industrial machine.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. One component transformed its rotary motion to vertical action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed that same spinning motion into a sideway’s motion feeding the log to the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood forward one precise increment per stroke.
“Every component seemed modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to integrate these parts in order that they operated in a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting with each descending stroke while moving on every return motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of basic components.”
A fact that brings us to the current puzzle. The task is you to reimagine one of the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Construct a machine which converts circular motion into vertical action. You have these components only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a tube or housing through which one of the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so the components do not collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK with the answer.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please suggest (non obvious) contenders for the world’s greatest creation.
