Are You Able to Crack It? That Overlooked Dutch Invention That Shaped our Modern Globe
One can find many contenders for the designation as “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a recent publication, however, that honor should go to a mechanised sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, constructing a simple trading ship necessitated around ten lumberjacks laboring over 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same amount of processed timber could be produced in less than seven days.”
Thanks to this speedy mechanical saw, that converted timber into planks using virtually no manual labor, the Dutch could construct vessels more quickly than any other nation, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial as well as cultural supremacy across the continent and the world.
The Original True Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s initial true industrial machine.” A windmill rotated a wheel. One component transformed its rotary motion into up-and-down motion for the cutting blade. Another component transformed the spinning motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the timber to the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward a measured step per stroke.
“Every component seemed simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine them so the machine operated within a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting on every descending stroke while moving on every return motion. It was an astonishingly intelligent application of basic parts.”
Which brings us up to today’s challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the fundamental concepts behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism which converts rotary motion to up-and-down action. You have these items only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or sleeve through which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Assume you can put things on a stand, so that the parts do not fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK featuring the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (less celebrated) contenders as the world’s greatest creation.
