Are You Able to Crack This? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation Which Forged our Contemporary World
There are numerous contenders to claim the designation as “world’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
As per a recent publication, however, that honor should go to the automated sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to mechanised cutting, building a modest merchant vessel required around 10 lumberjacks working for 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical quantity of processed timber might be manufactured within a week.”
Owing to their rapid automated cutter, that converted timber to boards using almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct vessels more quickly compared to anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, economic as well as cultural supremacy in the continent and the globe.
The Original True Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, represented “humanity’s first true factory apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. One component transformed its circular motion into up-and-down motion to power the saw. Another component transformed that same spinning movement into a lateral motion advancing the log toward the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the wood forward a measured step per cycle.
“Every component seemed modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to integrate these parts in order that they operated within a perfectly controlled order, sawing with each descending motion while advancing with each upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of basic parts.”
Which leads us up to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reinvent a key the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism which converts circular movement to up-and-down motion. You have these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or housing through which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume it is possible to mount components on a stand, so the parts don’t collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time with the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) contenders as the planet’s most impactful invention.
