Are You Able to Solve This? That Forgotten Dutch Creation Which Forged our Modern World
There are numerous contenders to claim the title of “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a new book, though, that title should go to the mechanised timber mill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before automated sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel necessitated around ten sawyers working for three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber could be manufactured within a week.”
Owing to this rapid mechanical cutter, which converted timber into boards using virtually no manual labor, the Dutch could construct vessels more quickly than any other nation, an advantage that sparked a century of Dutch naval, financial as well as artistic dominance in the continent and the globe.
The Original True Industrial Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, argues Dávila, represented “humanity’s first true factory machine.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. One component converted the rotary motion into up-and-down motion to power the saw. Another component transformed that same spinning motion into a lateral movement feeding the log toward the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood ahead one precise increment per cycle.
“Each element seemed modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius was to combine these parts in order that they operated within a precisely synchronized order, sawing with each descending motion and moving with each upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of basic parts.”
A fact that leads us to today’s puzzle. I’d like for you to reimagine one of the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic invention.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a mechanism which converts circular motion to up-and-down motion. Your available these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing into which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so the parts don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back later today UK with the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please suggest (non obvious) candidates for the world’s most impactful invention.
