Are You Able to Solve It? That Overlooked Dutch Invention Which Forged our Modern Globe
There are numerous candidates to claim the designation as “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to the mechanised sawmill invented by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, building a modest trading ship necessitated approximately 10 lumberjacks working over three months,” notes the author. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, an identical quantity of cut lumber might be produced in less than a week.”
Owing to their speedy automated cutter, which turned logs into planks using almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to build ships faster compared to anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial as well as artistic supremacy in the continent and the globe.
The Original True Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a gear. One component converted its rotary motion to up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed the rotary motion into a sideway’s movement advancing the timber toward the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the log ahead a measured step per stroke.
“Each element was simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius was to combine these parts in order that the machine acted within a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting on every downward stroke and advancing with each upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent use of basic parts.”
Which brings us to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Design a machine that turns rotary movement into up-and-down action. Your available these components only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the bars will fit perfectly. (Assume you can put things on a base, so that the components don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates as the world’s greatest invention.
