Are You Able to Solve This? That Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Shaped our Modern World
One can find numerous candidates to claim the title of “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a new book, however, that title belongs to the mechanised timber mill conceived by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before automated sawing, building a modest trading ship required around 10 lumberjacks laboring over three months,” notes the author. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, the same amount of processed timber might be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Owing to this rapid automated cutter, which converted logs to boards with virtually no human effort, Dutch builders could build vessels more quickly compared to anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Dutch maritime, financial and cultural supremacy in the continent and the globe.
The First True Manufacturing Device
The inventor's sawmill, argues Dávila, represented “humanity’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill rotated a gear. One component converted the rotary movement to up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. Another component changed the rotary movement into a lateral movement feeding the timber to the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward one precise increment each cycle.
“Every component was modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius was to integrate these parts so they operated in a perfectly controlled order, sawing on every downward stroke while moving with each return motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of basic parts.”
Which brings us to today’s challenge. I’d like you to reinvent one of the fundamental concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism that turns circular movement to up-and-down action. Your available these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a tube or housing into which one of the rods will fit perfectly. (Assume it is possible to mount components on a base, so the parts do not fall down.)
The solution returns later today UK time featuring the answer.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) candidates for the planet’s most impactful creation.