Are You Able to Crack This? That Forgotten Dutch Creation That Forged the Modern World
There are many candidates for the designation as “world’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, though, that title belongs to the mechanised sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, building a modest merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten sawyers laboring for three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, an identical quantity of processed timber could be manufactured within seven days.”
Owing to their rapid automated cutter, which converted logs into boards using almost no human effort, the Dutch could build ships more quickly compared to anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial and cultural supremacy in the continent and the globe.
The First Genuine Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues the writer, represented “mankind’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part transformed the circular movement to vertical action to power the cutting blade. Another component changed the spinning movement into a lateral movement feeding the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the wood ahead a measured step per stroke.
“Every component was simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to integrate these parts so they acted within a perfectly controlled order, sawing with each descending stroke and moving with each return motion. It was an astonishingly intelligent use of fundamental components.”
A fact that brings us up to today’s puzzle. I’d like you to reimagine one of the fundamental concepts behind this historic machine.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism which converts circular motion into vertical motion. You have these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or housing into which one of the rods will fit snugly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a stand, so that the parts do not collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK time with the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s greatest creation.
