Are You Able to Crack It? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation That Forged the Modern Globe
One can find many candidates for the designation as “world’s greatest innovation.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a new book, though, that honor belongs to the automated sawmill conceived by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, building a modest trading ship necessitated around ten sawyers laboring for three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical quantity of cut lumber could be produced in less than a week.”
Owing to their speedy mechanical saw, which turned timber into planks with almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to build vessels faster than any other nation, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial and artistic dominance across the continent and the world.
The Original Genuine Industrial Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “mankind’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a gear. A single part converted its circular movement to vertical action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed the spinning motion into a sideway’s movement advancing the timber to the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the wood forward one precise increment per cycle.
“Each element was modest on its own. The Dutchman’s genius was to combine them so the machine acted within a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing on every downward motion and moving on every return stroke. It was a remarkably intelligent use of fundamental components.”
Which brings us up to today’s puzzle. The task is for you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic invention.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a mechanism which converts rotary motion into up-and-down motion. Your available these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or sleeve through which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so the parts don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time featuring the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (less celebrated) contenders as the planet’s greatest invention.
