Can You Crack It? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation Which Shaped the Modern Globe
There are many candidates to claim the designation as “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a recent publication, though, that title should go to the mechanised sawmill invented by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, constructing a simple trading ship required approximately 10 sawyers laboring for three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, an identical quantity of processed timber might be manufactured within seven days.”
Thanks to their rapid automated saw, that converted logs into planks using almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could construct ships faster than any other nation, an advantage that sparked a century of Dutch naval, economic and artistic supremacy in the continent and the world.
The First Genuine Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial true industrial machine.” A wind turbine turned a gear. One component transformed its circular motion to vertical action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed the spinning motion into a lateral motion advancing the log to the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the wood forward one precise increment each stroke.
“Every component seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to integrate them in order that the machine acted in a precisely synchronized order, sawing with each downward motion while moving with each upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of basic parts.”
A fact that brings us to the current challenge. I’d like you to reinvent a key the basic ideas behind this historic machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a mechanism that turns circular movement into up-and-down action. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve into which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a base, so that the parts do not collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK with the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates as the planet’s most impactful invention.
