Are You Able to Crack It? The Forgotten Netherlands Invention Which Shaped our Contemporary Globe
One can find numerous contenders for the designation as “world’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a recent publication, however, that honor should go to a mechanised sawmill conceived through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before automated sawing, building a simple trading ship necessitated around ten sawyers working for three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical quantity of cut lumber could be manufactured within a week.”
Thanks to this rapid automated cutter, which converted timber to boards with almost no human effort, Dutch builders could construct vessels faster than any other nation, an advantage that sparked a century of Netherlands maritime, economic and cultural supremacy in Europe and the world.
The Original Genuine Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues Dávila, was “humanity’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. A single part converted the rotary motion to up-and-down motion for the cutting blade. Another component changed the rotary motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the log toward the blade. A ratchet system moved the wood forward one precise increment per cycle.
“Each element seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to combine these parts so the machine acted within a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing with each downward motion while moving on every return stroke. It was an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental components.”
A fact that brings us up to today’s puzzle. The task is you to reinvent a key the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic machine.
Round and Up
Design a machine which converts rotary motion into up-and-down action. Your available these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or sleeve into which a single the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume it is possible to mount components on a stand, so that the components don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK with the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) candidates for the world’s greatest invention.
