Are You Able to Crack It? The Overlooked Dutch Invention That Forged the Modern Globe
There are many candidates to claim the title of “planet’s greatest innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.
As per a new book, though, that honor should go to the automated timber mill invented by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, constructing a simple merchant vessel required around 10 sawyers laboring for three months,” notes the author. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be produced within a week.”
Thanks to their rapid automated saw, that turned logs to boards with virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders could construct vessels more quickly compared to anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial as well as cultural supremacy in Europe and the world.
The Original Genuine Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends the writer, represented “humanity’s first authentic industrial machine.” A wind turbine turned a gear. A single part converted its rotary movement to up-and-down action to power the saw. Another component transformed that same rotary movement into a lateral movement feeding the log to the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the log forward one precise increment per cycle.
“Each element seemed simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to integrate them so they acted within a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every descending stroke and advancing with each upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of fundamental parts.”
Which brings us to the current puzzle. The task is you to reinvent one of the basic concepts underpinning this historic invention.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a mechanism that turns rotary motion to vertical motion. Your available these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or sleeve into which a single the bars can slide snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so the components do not collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK time with the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please propose (non obvious) contenders as the world’s greatest creation.
