Can You Crack It? The Forgotten Dutch Creation Which Shaped our Modern World
One can find many candidates for the title of “world’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a new book, though, that honor belongs to a automated timber mill conceived by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to mechanised cutting, constructing a simple trading ship necessitated approximately ten sawyers laboring over 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber might be produced in less than a week.”
Owing to this speedy automated saw, which turned timber to planks using almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to construct ships more quickly compared to any other nation, an advantage that sparked a century of Netherlands maritime, economic as well as artistic dominance in the continent and the world.
The First True Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. One component transformed the rotary motion into vertical motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed the rotary movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the log to the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the wood forward a measured step per stroke.
“Each element seemed simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine them so the machine acted in a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing on every descending stroke and moving on every return motion. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent use of fundamental components.”
A fact that brings us up to today’s challenge. I’d like you to reimagine one of the basic concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Circular to Vertical
Design a machine that turns rotary movement into vertical motion. You have these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing through which a single the rods will fit perfectly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a stand, so that the parts do not collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the answer.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s greatest creation.
