Are You Able to Solve It? The Forgotten Dutch Creation That Shaped our Contemporary Globe
One can find many contenders for the title of “planet’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
As per a new book, though, that honor belongs to a mechanised timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, constructing a simple merchant vessel required around 10 lumberjacks working over three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same amount of cut lumber could be produced within seven days.”
Owing to this rapid mechanical saw, that converted timber to planks with almost no human effort, Dutch builders were able to build ships faster compared to any other nation, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, economic as well as artistic supremacy across Europe and the world.
The Original True Manufacturing Device
The inventor's lumber mill, argues Dávila, was “humanity’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. A single part converted the circular movement into vertical action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed that same spinning motion into a lateral motion feeding the timber toward the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the wood forward a measured step per stroke.
“Each element was modest by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to combine these parts so the machine acted within a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing with each downward motion while moving on every upward stroke. It was an astonishingly clever use of basic components.”
Which brings us to the current puzzle. The task is you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Design a mechanism which converts rotary movement to up-and-down action. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or sleeve through which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so that the parts don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the answer.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to propose (less celebrated) candidates as the planet’s greatest creation.