Are You Able to Crack This? The Forgotten Dutch Invention Which Shaped the Modern World
One can find numerous contenders to claim the title of “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, however, that honor belongs to a mechanised timber mill conceived through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before automated cutting, building a modest trading ship required approximately ten sawyers working for three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same quantity of processed timber could be manufactured within a week.”
Owing to their rapid automated saw, which converted logs into planks using almost no human effort, the Dutch could construct ships faster than anyone else, an advantage that unleashed a century of Netherlands naval, financial as well as cultural supremacy in the continent and the world.
The Original True Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a gear. One component converted its circular movement into up-and-down motion to power the saw. Another component changed that same spinning motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the log toward the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward a measured step per cycle.
“Every component was simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius was to combine these parts so the machine acted within a perfectly controlled order, sawing on every descending stroke and advancing with each return stroke. It was an astonishingly clever application of fundamental parts.”
Which brings us up to today’s challenge. I’d like you to reimagine one of the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic machine.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism that turns circular motion to up-and-down action. Your available these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a tube or housing into which a single the bars can slide snugly. (Consider that you can put things on a stand, so the parts don’t fall down.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please suggest (less celebrated) contenders as the world’s most impactful creation.
