Can You Crack It? The Overlooked Netherlands Invention Which Shaped our Contemporary Globe
There are numerous candidates to claim the title of “planet’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.
As per a new book, though, that title should go to a mechanised timber mill invented by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before automated sawing, constructing a modest trading ship necessitated around ten sawyers laboring for three months,” notes the author. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, the same amount of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Owing to this rapid automated cutter, which turned logs into planks using almost no manual labor, the Dutch could build ships faster compared to anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial as well as cultural supremacy in Europe and the world.
The Original Genuine Industrial Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, argues the writer, was “humanity’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. One component converted its rotary motion into up-and-down action to power the saw. Another component changed the rotary motion into a lateral movement advancing the log toward the blade. A ratchet system shifted the log ahead a measured step per stroke.
“Each element seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to integrate them in order that the machine acted within a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting with each descending stroke while advancing on every return stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of fundamental components.”
A fact that leads us up to today’s challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent a key the basic ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism which converts circular movement into up-and-down action. Your available these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing through which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so that the components don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK with the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please suggest (non obvious) contenders as the world’s greatest invention.