Can You Solve This? The Forgotten Netherlands Invention That Shaped our Modern Globe
There are many candidates for the title of “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a new book, however, that title belongs to the mechanised timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, constructing a simple merchant vessel required around ten lumberjacks laboring for 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Thanks to their rapid mechanical cutter, which converted timber to boards using almost no human effort, the Dutch could build ships faster compared to anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial as well as artistic supremacy in the continent and the globe.
The Original True Industrial Device
The inventor's sawmill, argues the writer, was “mankind’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. One component transformed its circular movement into up-and-down action to power the saw. A separate mechanism transformed that same spinning movement into a lateral movement advancing the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the log ahead one precise increment each cycle.
“Every component seemed simple on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to combine them so they acted in a perfectly controlled order, cutting with each descending motion while moving on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever use of basic components.”
Which leads us to the current challenge. I’d like for you to reimagine a key the basic ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine that turns circular motion into vertical action. You have these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing into which one of the rods can slide perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to mount components on a stand, so that the parts don’t collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK time with the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please suggest (less celebrated) candidates as the planet’s greatest invention.