Are You Able to Solve It? The Overlooked Dutch Invention That Shaped our Contemporary Globe
There are many contenders for the designation as “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a new book, however, that honor should go to the automated timber mill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before automated sawing, building a simple merchant vessel required around ten sawyers working for three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than a week.”
Thanks to this rapid automated cutter, that turned logs to boards using almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to build vessels more quickly compared to any other nation, which unleashed a century of Netherlands naval, economic and cultural supremacy across Europe and the world.
The Original True Industrial Device
The inventor's sawmill, argues Dávila, was “mankind’s first authentic industrial machine.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part converted its circular movement into up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. Another component changed the rotary motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the log to the blade. A ratchet system moved the wood forward one precise increment per stroke.
“Each element was modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine them in order that they operated in a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting with each descending motion and moving with each upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent use of fundamental parts.”
A fact that leads us up to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reinvent one of the basic concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Construct a machine that turns circular motion into vertical action. You have these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or housing into which one of the rods can slide perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a stand, so the parts don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK time featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) contenders as the planet’s most impactful invention.
