Can You Solve It? That Overlooked Netherlands Invention That Shaped the Contemporary World
One can find many candidates to claim the title of “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a new book, however, that honor belongs to the automated sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before automated cutting, constructing a modest trading ship necessitated approximately 10 lumberjacks laboring over three months,” writes the author. “Using wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be manufactured within a week.”
Owing to their speedy automated saw, that converted logs into boards with almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to build ships more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that sparked a century of Dutch maritime, financial and cultural dominance in the continent and the globe.
The First True Manufacturing Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues Dávila, was “humanity’s initial true factory machine.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. One component converted its circular motion to vertical action to power the saw. Another component changed that same rotary movement into a lateral motion feeding the log toward the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood forward a measured step per cycle.
“Every component was modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius was to combine them so the machine operated in a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every downward motion and advancing with each upward motion. This constituted a remarkably intelligent use of fundamental components.”
Which leads us up to today’s challenge. I’d like you to reinvent a key the basic ideas behind this historic machine.
Round and Up
Design a machine which converts rotary motion to vertical motion. Your available these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a tube or housing into which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Assume it is possible to mount components on a base, so that the parts do not fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) contenders as the planet’s greatest invention.
