Can You Crack It? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation Which Forged our Contemporary World
There are many contenders for the designation as “world’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, however, that title should go to the automated sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before automated sawing, building a modest trading ship necessitated around ten sawyers laboring for 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of processed timber might be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Owing to this rapid automated cutter, which converted timber to planks with almost no human effort, the Dutch could construct vessels faster compared to anyone else, an advantage that sparked a century of Dutch maritime, financial and cultural dominance across Europe and the globe.
The First Genuine Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, represented “humanity’s initial true factory machine.” A windmill rotated a wheel. A single part converted its circular motion into up-and-down motion to power the saw. Another component transformed the rotary motion into a lateral movement feeding the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the log ahead one precise increment per stroke.
“Every component was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to integrate these parts in order that they operated within a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing on every descending stroke and advancing with each return stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent use of basic components.”
A fact that brings us to today’s puzzle. The task is you to reimagine one of the fundamental concepts underpinning this historic machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine which converts circular motion into vertical motion. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a tube or housing into which a single the bars can slide snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a stand, so that the components don’t fall down.)
The solution returns later today UK time with the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) candidates as the planet’s most impactful invention.
