Are You Able to Crack This? That Overlooked Netherlands Invention That Forged the Modern Globe
One can find many candidates for the designation as “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a new book, however, that honor belongs to a mechanised timber mill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, constructing a simple trading ship required around 10 lumberjacks working over 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, an identical quantity of cut lumber might be produced in less than seven days.”
Owing to this rapid automated cutter, which converted timber into boards using virtually no manual labor, the Dutch could construct ships more quickly compared to any other nation, which unleashed a century of Netherlands naval, economic as well as artistic supremacy across Europe and the world.
The First True Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues the writer, was “mankind’s first true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. One component transformed its rotary motion into up-and-down action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed the spinning movement into a lateral movement feeding the log toward the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood ahead one precise increment per cycle.
“Each element was modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine them in order that they acted in a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing on every descending motion while advancing with each return stroke. It was an astonishingly clever use of fundamental parts.”
A fact that brings us up to today’s puzzle. I’d like for you to reimagine a key the fundamental concepts behind this historic machine.
Round and Up
Construct a machine that turns circular motion to up-and-down action. You have these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or sleeve through which a single the bars will fit snugly. (Assume you can mount components on a stand, so that the parts don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) contenders as the planet’s greatest creation.