Can You Solve This? That Overlooked Dutch Creation That Forged our Modern World
One can find numerous candidates to claim the title of “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a new book, though, that title belongs to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Prior to mechanised cutting, building a modest trading ship necessitated around 10 lumberjacks laboring for 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven lumber mills, an identical amount of cut lumber could be produced within a week.”
Thanks to their rapid automated cutter, which converted timber to boards using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders could construct ships faster compared to anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Netherlands naval, economic as well as artistic dominance across Europe and the world.
The First Genuine Industrial Device
The inventor's sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “mankind’s initial true industrial machine.” A windmill rotated a wheel. One component converted its rotary movement into up-and-down motion for the saw. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the log ahead one precise increment each cycle.
“Each element was modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts in order that they acted in a perfectly controlled order, sawing on every descending motion while advancing with each upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of fundamental parts.”
Which brings us up to the current puzzle. I’d like you to reimagine one of the basic ideas underpinning this historic invention.
Circular to Vertical
Design a mechanism that turns rotary movement to vertical motion. Your available these components only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or sleeve through which one of the rods can slide perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so the parts don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK time featuring the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please propose (less celebrated) candidates as the planet’s most impactful creation.
