Can You Solve It? That Overlooked Netherlands Creation That Shaped the Contemporary Globe
One can find many contenders for the designation as “world’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to the automated sawmill conceived through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Prior to mechanised cutting, building a modest merchant vessel required approximately 10 lumberjacks laboring over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Thanks to this speedy automated cutter, that turned logs into planks with almost no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to construct ships faster compared to any other nation, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial as well as cultural dominance across Europe and the world.
The First True Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's sawmill, contends the writer, represented “mankind’s first true factory machine.” A windmill rotated a wheel. A single part converted its rotary movement into up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the log to the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood ahead one precise increment per cycle.
“Every component was simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius was to integrate these parts so the machine operated within a precisely synchronized order, cutting with each descending stroke while moving with each upward stroke. It was a remarkably clever application of fundamental components.”
A fact that leads us up to the current puzzle. The task is for you to reimagine one of the basic concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine which converts circular motion into vertical action. You have these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a tube or sleeve into which a single the rods can slide perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so that the parts do not fall down.)
The solution returns later today UK with the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please suggest (less celebrated) candidates as the world’s greatest creation.
