Can You Solve This? That Forgotten Netherlands Invention That Forged our Modern Globe
There are many candidates for the designation as “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a new book, though, that honor belongs to the automated timber mill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten lumberjacks laboring for 90 days,” notes the author. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, the same amount of processed timber could be manufactured within seven days.”
Owing to this rapid automated saw, which converted timber into planks with virtually no manual labor, the Dutch could construct ships more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial and cultural dominance in the continent and the globe.
The Original True Manufacturing Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues Dávila, was “humanity’s initial authentic industrial machine.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. A single part transformed the circular movement into up-and-down action to power the saw. A separate mechanism transformed that same spinning movement into a lateral motion advancing the log toward the blade. A ratchet system shifted the log ahead a measured step each cycle.
“Each element was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to combine them in order that the machine operated within a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every downward motion and advancing with each return motion. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental parts.”
A fact that leads us up to the current challenge. I’d like you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic machine.
Round and Up
Construct a machine that turns circular motion into up-and-down action. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve through which a single the rods can slide snugly. (Assume you can put things on a base, so that the parts don’t collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time with the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s most impactful creation.