Are You Able to Solve It? The Forgotten Netherlands Invention That Forged our Contemporary Globe
There are many candidates for the designation as “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to a automated sawmill invented by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before automated cutting, building a modest merchant vessel required around 10 lumberjacks working over 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber could be produced in less than seven days.”
Thanks to their speedy mechanical cutter, that turned timber into planks with almost no human effort, the Dutch could build vessels faster than anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial and artistic dominance across Europe and the globe.
The Original True Industrial Device
The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. One component converted its rotary movement to up-and-down motion to power the saw. A separate mechanism changed the rotary movement into a lateral movement advancing the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward one precise increment each cycle.
“Each element was simple on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to integrate these parts so they operated within a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting on every downward motion while moving on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever use of fundamental parts.”
A fact that leads us up to today’s puzzle. I’d like you to reimagine one of the basic ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a mechanism which converts circular motion into up-and-down motion. Your available these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a tube or sleeve into which one of the rods will fit snugly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a stand, so that the parts do not fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the answer.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please suggest (less celebrated) candidates as the planet’s greatest creation.
