Can You Crack It? That Overlooked Netherlands Creation Which Shaped the Contemporary World
One can find many contenders to claim the title of “world’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, however, that title belongs to the mechanised sawmill conceived by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to mechanised cutting, building a simple trading ship necessitated around 10 sawyers laboring over 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same amount of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Thanks to their rapid mechanical saw, that turned logs into boards using almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could build ships faster compared to anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial as well as artistic dominance across Europe and the globe.
The Original Genuine Industrial Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, argues Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial true industrial machine.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. A single part transformed its rotary motion into vertical action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed the rotary movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the log to the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the log ahead a measured step each cycle.
“Every component was modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius was to integrate them in order that the machine operated in a perfectly controlled order, sawing with each downward stroke and moving with each upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental components.”
A fact that brings us up to today’s challenge. I’d like you to reimagine one of the basic concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Construct a machine that turns rotary movement into vertical motion. Your available these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or housing through which one of the bars will fit perfectly. (Assume you can put things on a base, so that the components do not fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s greatest creation.
