Can You Solve It? That Forgotten Dutch Creation That Forged our Modern Globe
There are numerous candidates to claim the designation as “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to the mechanised timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Prior to mechanised cutting, constructing a modest merchant vessel required around ten lumberjacks working for 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be produced in less than a week.”
Thanks to this speedy automated cutter, which converted logs into boards with almost no manual labor, the Dutch could construct ships more quickly compared to any other nation, which unleashed a century of Netherlands naval, financial and artistic supremacy across the continent and the world.
The Original True Manufacturing Device
The inventor's lumber mill, argues the writer, was “humanity’s first true factory machine.” A windmill rotated a gear. A single part converted its rotary movement into vertical motion to power the saw. Another component changed the spinning motion into a sideway’s movement advancing the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward one precise increment per stroke.
“Each element was modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to integrate these parts so they operated in a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every descending motion while advancing with each upward stroke. It was a remarkably clever use of fundamental parts.”
A fact that brings us up to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reinvent one of the fundamental concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism that turns circular movement into up-and-down motion. Your available these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or housing through which one of the rods will fit snugly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so that the components do not collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK with the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) contenders as the planet’s most impactful invention.
