Can You Solve This? The Overlooked Dutch Invention Which Shaped our Contemporary Globe
One can find numerous contenders to claim the designation as “world’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a recent publication, though, that title belongs to the automated timber mill conceived by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before automated cutting, constructing a simple merchant vessel required around ten sawyers laboring over three months,” notes the author. “With wind-driven lumber mills, an identical quantity of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Thanks to their rapid automated cutter, that turned timber to planks with virtually no human effort, Dutch builders were able to construct vessels more quickly compared to any other nation, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial and cultural dominance across Europe and the world.
The Original True Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends the writer, was “mankind’s initial authentic industrial machine.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. One component transformed the rotary movement into up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s motion advancing the log to the blade. A ratchet system moved the wood forward one precise increment per cycle.
“Each element was simple on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to combine these parts in order that the machine acted within a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing on every downward stroke and advancing with each upward stroke. It was a remarkably intelligent application of fundamental components.”
A fact that brings us up to today’s challenge. The task is you to reinvent a key the basic concepts behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine that turns circular motion into vertical action. Your available these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or sleeve into which a single the rods can slide snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so that the components don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK time featuring the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) candidates for the planet’s greatest creation.
