Are You Able to Solve This? The Forgotten Dutch Creation That Shaped the Contemporary World
There are many candidates to claim the title of “world’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a recent publication, however, that title should go to a mechanised sawmill invented by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, building a simple trading ship necessitated approximately ten lumberjacks working over 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven sawmills, the same quantity of processed timber might be manufactured in less than a week.”
Owing to their speedy mechanical saw, which turned logs to planks with almost no manual labor, the Dutch could build vessels faster than anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial as well as cultural supremacy across Europe and the world.
The First True Manufacturing Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial true industrial machine.” A windmill turned a gear. One component converted its rotary motion to vertical action for the cutting blade. Another component transformed the spinning motion into a lateral motion feeding the log to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the log forward a measured step each cycle.
“Each element was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius was to combine these parts in order that the machine operated within a precisely synchronized order, sawing with each descending motion while moving on every upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of basic parts.”
Which brings us up to the current puzzle. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the basic ideas behind this historic invention.
Circular to Vertical
Design a mechanism that turns rotary motion into up-and-down motion. You have these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a tube or housing into which a single the bars will fit perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a stand, so the parts do not fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please propose (less celebrated) candidates for the world’s most impactful invention.
