Can You Crack This? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation That Shaped our Contemporary World
There are numerous candidates to claim the designation as “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to a automated timber mill invented by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before automated sawing, constructing a simple trading ship required approximately 10 lumberjacks working over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, the same amount of processed timber could be produced in less than seven days.”
Owing to their speedy mechanical cutter, that converted timber into boards with almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to build vessels faster compared to anyone else, which unleashed a century of Dutch naval, financial as well as cultural supremacy in the continent and the globe.
The First True Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues Dávila, was “mankind’s initial true factory machine.” A windmill rotated a gear. One component converted the rotary motion into vertical motion for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed the spinning motion into a sideway’s movement advancing the log toward the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the wood forward one precise increment per cycle.
“Every component seemed modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to integrate these parts so they acted within a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing with each descending stroke and moving with each upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent use of fundamental components.”
Which leads us to today’s challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent a key the basic concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Design a machine that turns circular movement to vertical action. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or housing into which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so that the components do not fall down.)
The solution returns later today UK with the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (less celebrated) contenders as the planet’s greatest creation.
