Can You Solve This? The Overlooked Dutch Invention That Shaped our Modern World
One can find numerous contenders to claim the title of “planet’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, however, that title belongs to a automated sawmill conceived through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before automated sawing, constructing a modest trading ship required approximately 10 lumberjacks laboring over 90 days,” notes the author. “Using wind-driven sawmills, the same amount of processed timber could be manufactured in less than a week.”
Thanks to their rapid automated cutter, that turned logs to planks with almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct vessels more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial as well as artistic supremacy across the continent and the world.
The First True Manufacturing Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues the writer, was “mankind’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a gear. A single part transformed its rotary motion into up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s motion advancing the timber to the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the log forward one precise increment per cycle.
“Every component was simple on its own. The Dutchman’s genius was to combine them so the machine operated within a perfectly controlled order, sawing on every descending motion while moving on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever use of fundamental components.”
Which brings us up to the current puzzle. The task is for you to reinvent a key the fundamental concepts behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Circular to Vertical
Design a mechanism that turns rotary motion to up-and-down action. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or sleeve into which a single the rods will fit snugly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so that the components don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK time featuring the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (less celebrated) candidates as the world’s most impactful invention.
