Are You Able to Solve It? The Overlooked Netherlands Invention Which Forged the Contemporary World
One can find many contenders to claim the title of “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a new book, however, that title belongs to the automated sawmill invented by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Prior to mechanised cutting, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated approximately 10 sawyers laboring over three months,” notes the author. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same amount of processed timber could be produced in less than a week.”
Owing to this speedy mechanical saw, which turned logs into planks with almost no manual labor, the Dutch could build ships more quickly than any other nation, which sparked a century of Dutch naval, financial as well as artistic dominance across the continent and the globe.
The Original Genuine Industrial Device
The inventor's sawmill, argues Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a gear. One component transformed its rotary motion into up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. Another component changed the rotary movement into a lateral motion advancing the log toward the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the log ahead a measured step per cycle.
“Each element seemed modest on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to combine these parts so they operated within a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting with each descending motion while advancing on every upward stroke. It was a remarkably clever use of basic parts.”
A fact that brings us to the current challenge. The task is for you to reinvent one of the basic concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism that turns circular motion into vertical action. Your available these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a tube or sleeve through which one of the bars will fit perfectly. (Assume you can put things on a stand, so the parts don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time featuring the answer.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) candidates as the planet’s greatest invention.
