Can You Crack This? That Forgotten Netherlands Creation Which Shaped our Contemporary World
One can find many contenders to claim the title of “planet’s greatest innovation.” The circular axle. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a recent publication, however, that honor should go to a mechanised timber mill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, building a modest trading ship necessitated approximately ten sawyers laboring for three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber could be manufactured within seven days.”
Owing to their rapid automated cutter, which turned logs to boards using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders could construct ships faster compared to anyone else, which sparked a century of Netherlands naval, economic and artistic supremacy across the continent and the globe.
The Original True Manufacturing Machine
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, represented “mankind’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. One component converted the rotary movement into up-and-down motion for the saw. A separate mechanism changed the spinning motion into a lateral movement advancing the log toward the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the log ahead one precise increment each stroke.
“Each element was simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine these parts so the machine acted within a perfectly controlled order, cutting on every downward stroke while advancing with each upward stroke. It was an astonishingly clever application of fundamental parts.”
A fact that leads us up to today’s puzzle. The task is you to reinvent a key the fundamental ideas behind this historic machine.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism that turns rotary motion to up-and-down action. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a tube or sleeve into which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a base, so the components don’t fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK with the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) contenders for the world’s most impactful invention.