Are You Able to Solve This? That Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Forged our Contemporary World
One can find many contenders to claim the title of “world’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to a mechanised timber mill invented through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, building a modest merchant vessel required approximately ten sawyers working for 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical quantity of processed timber could be manufactured within a week.”
Owing to this rapid automated cutter, which converted timber into boards with almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could construct vessels more quickly than anyone else, which unleashed a century of Netherlands maritime, financial and artistic dominance across Europe and the world.
The First True Industrial Device
The inventor's sawmill, argues the writer, represented “mankind’s initial authentic industrial machine.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part converted the rotary motion into up-and-down action for the saw. A separate mechanism changed the spinning motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the log to the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood ahead a measured step per cycle.
“Every component seemed simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine them in order that the machine operated within a perfectly controlled order, cutting with each downward motion while advancing on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever application of basic parts.”
Which brings us up to today’s challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the basic concepts behind Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Design a machine that turns rotary movement to vertical motion. Your available these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve into which one of the rods will fit snugly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so that the components don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to suggest (non obvious) candidates as the world’s greatest creation.
