Can You Solve This? The Overlooked Dutch Creation That Forged the Contemporary World
There are numerous contenders to claim the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, however, that title should go to a mechanised timber mill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before automated sawing, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten lumberjacks laboring over 90 days,” notes the author. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, an identical quantity of processed timber could be produced in less than seven days.”
Thanks to their rapid mechanical saw, which converted timber into planks using virtually no human effort, Dutch builders could build ships faster compared to any other nation, an advantage that unleashed a century of Dutch maritime, financial and artistic dominance in the continent and the world.
The Original True Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues the writer, was “mankind’s initial authentic factory machine.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part converted the circular motion into vertical motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed that same spinning motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the timber toward the cutter. A ratchet system moved the log forward one precise increment each stroke.
“Every component was simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to integrate them in order that the machine acted in a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting with each descending motion and moving with each return stroke. It was an astonishingly clever use of fundamental components.”
A fact that brings us to today’s puzzle. I’d like for you to reimagine one of the basic ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine which converts rotary motion to vertical action. Your available these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or sleeve through which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so that the components do not collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) contenders as the world’s greatest creation.
