Can You Solve This? That Overlooked Netherlands Creation Which Forged the Contemporary Globe
One can find numerous candidates for the title of “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to the automated sawmill invented by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before automated cutting, constructing a modest merchant vessel required around 10 sawyers working over 90 days,” notes the author. “Using wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber might be produced within seven days.”
Thanks to their rapid automated saw, that converted logs into planks using almost no human effort, the Dutch could construct ships more quickly than any other nation, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, economic as well as cultural dominance in Europe and the world.
The First True Industrial Machine
The inventor's sawmill, argues the writer, was “mankind’s initial true factory apparatus.” A windmill turned a gear. A single part converted the circular motion to vertical motion to power the cutting blade. Another component changed the rotary movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the timber to the blade. A ratchet system moved the wood ahead one precise increment each cycle.
“Each element was simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine them in order that they acted within a precisely synchronized order, sawing on every downward stroke while advancing on every return stroke. It was a remarkably clever use of fundamental parts.”
A fact that leads us to today’s puzzle. I’d like you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine that turns circular movement into vertical action. You have these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or sleeve into which a single the bars will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a stand, so the components do not collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please suggest (less celebrated) contenders as the world’s most impactful creation.
