Are You Able to Solve This? The Forgotten Dutch Invention That Forged our Contemporary Globe
One can find many contenders to claim the title of “planet’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a new book, though, that title belongs to the automated sawmill invented through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, building a simple trading ship required approximately 10 lumberjacks working over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be produced within a week.”
Thanks to this rapid automated saw, which converted logs into boards using almost no manual labor, the Dutch could construct vessels more quickly compared to anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Dutch naval, economic as well as cultural supremacy across the continent and the globe.
The Original Genuine Industrial Device
The inventor's lumber mill, argues the writer, was “humanity’s initial authentic factory machine.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. A single part converted the circular motion to vertical motion for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the timber to the cutter. A ratchet system moved the log forward one precise increment per cycle.
“Every component was simple on its own. The Dutchman’s genius was to combine them so they operated within a perfectly controlled order, cutting on every descending stroke and advancing on every return stroke. This constituted a remarkably intelligent application of basic components.”
Which brings us up to today’s puzzle. The task is for you to reinvent one of the basic concepts behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism which converts rotary movement to up-and-down motion. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve through which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Assume you can put things on a stand, so the components do not fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time featuring the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s greatest creation.
