Can You Solve It? That Forgotten Dutch Invention Which Forged the Modern World
There are numerous candidates to claim the designation as “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a recent publication, though, that title belongs to the automated timber mill conceived through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel necessitated around ten lumberjacks laboring over 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same amount of cut lumber could be produced in less than seven days.”
Owing to their rapid automated saw, that converted timber to planks using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to construct vessels more quickly compared to any other nation, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Dutch maritime, financial as well as artistic dominance in the continent and the world.
The Original Genuine Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues Dávila, represented “mankind’s initial authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill turned a gear. A single part converted the rotary motion to up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. Another component transformed that same spinning motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the log toward the blade. A ratchet system moved the log ahead one precise increment per stroke.
“Every component seemed modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to combine them so the machine acted within a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every descending stroke while advancing with each upward stroke. This constituted a remarkably clever use of basic parts.”
A fact that leads us up to the current puzzle. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the basic ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism that turns rotary motion into vertical motion. You have these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve through which one of the bars will fit perfectly. (Assume it is possible to mount components on a base, so that the parts don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) candidates as the world’s most impactful creation.