Can You Crack This? The Overlooked Dutch Invention Which Shaped the Contemporary Globe
One can find numerous candidates for the title of “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to the mechanised timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, building a simple merchant vessel required approximately ten lumberjacks working for 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same amount of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Thanks to this rapid mechanical saw, which converted logs to planks with almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could build vessels faster than anyone else, an advantage that sparked a century of Dutch naval, financial as well as artistic supremacy in Europe and the globe.
The First True Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues the writer, represented “mankind’s initial authentic factory machine.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. One component transformed its circular motion to vertical motion for the saw. Another component changed the rotary motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber toward the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the wood forward one precise increment each stroke.
“Every component seemed modest on its own. The Dutchman’s genius was to integrate them so they operated in a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing with each descending motion while advancing with each upward stroke. It was a remarkably clever use of basic components.”
A fact that leads us up to the current challenge. I’d like you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a machine that turns rotary motion to up-and-down motion. Your available these components only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or housing into which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Assume you can put things on a stand, so the components do not fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the answer.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) candidates as the world’s most impactful invention.
