Are You Able to Crack It? That Forgotten Dutch Invention Which Shaped our Contemporary World
One can find many candidates to claim the title of “world’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, though, that honor belongs to the automated timber mill conceived by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Prior to automated cutting, constructing a simple trading ship required approximately ten sawyers working for 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, an identical quantity of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Owing to their speedy mechanical saw, which converted timber to planks with virtually no human effort, Dutch builders were able to build vessels faster compared to anyone else, an advantage that sparked a century of Dutch maritime, financial as well as artistic supremacy in the continent and the globe.
The First True Industrial Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s first true industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part converted its rotary motion to vertical motion for the cutting blade. Another component changed the rotary motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber toward the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the log forward a measured step each stroke.
“Every component was modest by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to integrate these parts so they acted in a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing with each descending motion and advancing with each upward motion. It was a remarkably intelligent application of fundamental components.”
Which brings us up to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reimagine a key the fundamental concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism that turns rotary movement to up-and-down motion. You have these items only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a tube or housing into which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so that the components do not collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK with the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please propose (less celebrated) contenders for the planet’s most impactful invention.
