Are You Able to Crack It? The Overlooked Netherlands Invention Which Forged the Modern World
One can find numerous candidates for the designation as “world’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a new book, though, that title should go to a mechanised timber mill conceived by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to automated cutting, constructing a simple merchant vessel required around ten lumberjacks laboring over 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same quantity of processed timber might be manufactured in less than a week.”
Owing to this speedy automated cutter, that turned logs into boards using almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to build ships faster compared to anyone else, which unleashed a century of Dutch naval, economic as well as cultural dominance across the continent and the world.
The Original True Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, argues the writer, represented “humanity’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a gear. One component converted its circular motion into up-and-down motion for the saw. Another component changed the rotary movement into a sideway’s movement advancing the timber toward the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the wood forward a measured step each stroke.
“Each element seemed simple on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to combine them in order that the machine acted within a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every descending motion and advancing on every return motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of basic components.”
A fact that leads us to today’s challenge. I’d like you to reimagine one of the fundamental ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism that turns circular movement into up-and-down motion. You have these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or housing through which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so the parts don’t fall down.)
The solution returns later today UK time with the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) contenders as the world’s most impactful creation.
