Can You Solve This? The Overlooked Dutch Creation That Shaped the Contemporary Globe
One can find many contenders to claim the designation as “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a new book, however, that honor should go to a automated timber mill conceived by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to mechanised cutting, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated around 10 lumberjacks laboring over 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, an identical amount of processed timber could be manufactured in less than a week.”
Thanks to this speedy automated cutter, which turned logs into boards with almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to construct ships faster than any other nation, an advantage that unleashed a century of Dutch maritime, financial as well as artistic dominance across Europe and the globe.
The Original True Industrial Device
The inventor's lumber mill, argues Dávila, was “mankind’s initial true factory machine.” A windmill rotated a gear. One component transformed the circular movement to up-and-down motion for the saw. Another component changed the spinning movement into a sideway’s movement feeding the log to the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood ahead one precise increment per cycle.
“Every component seemed modest on its own. The Dutchman’s genius was to combine these parts in order that the machine acted in a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing with each downward stroke and moving on every return motion. This constituted a remarkably clever use of basic parts.”
A fact that brings us to today’s puzzle. The task is for you to reimagine a key the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic invention.
Round and Up
Design a machine which converts circular movement into vertical action. You have 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 snugly. (Consider that you can put things on a stand, so the components do not collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK with the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to propose (less celebrated) candidates for the planet’s greatest invention.
