Are You Able to Crack This? The Forgotten Dutch Invention Which Shaped the Contemporary Globe
There are many candidates to claim the title of “planet’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a new book, though, that title should go to a mechanised timber mill conceived by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before automated cutting, building a simple trading ship necessitated around 10 lumberjacks working over 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of processed timber could be manufactured within a week.”
Owing to their speedy automated saw, which converted logs to planks with almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could build vessels faster than any other nation, which sparked a century of Dutch maritime, economic and artistic dominance in the continent and the world.
The Original Genuine Industrial Machine
The inventor's sawmill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s initial authentic factory machine.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part converted its rotary motion to vertical motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed the rotary motion into a sideway’s movement advancing the log to the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward one precise increment per stroke.
“Each element was modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to integrate these parts in order that they operated in a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting on every descending stroke and moving on every upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of basic components.”
A fact that leads us to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reimagine one of the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a machine which converts rotary motion to vertical action. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or sleeve through which one of the rods can slide perfectly. (Assume you can put things on a stand, so the parts don’t fall down.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please suggest (less celebrated) candidates as the world’s most impactful creation.
