Can You Solve It? The Forgotten Dutch Creation Which Forged the Modern Globe
One can find many candidates for the title of “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a new book, though, that title should go to a mechanised timber mill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before automated sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel required around ten sawyers working for three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical amount of processed timber could be produced within a week.”
Thanks to this rapid automated cutter, which turned logs to boards using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders could build vessels faster compared to any other nation, which unleashed a century of Netherlands naval, economic as well as cultural supremacy in Europe and the globe.
The First Genuine Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's sawmill, argues the writer, represented “mankind’s first true factory apparatus.” A windmill turned a gear. One component transformed its circular movement to vertical motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed the rotary movement into a lateral movement feeding the log to the blade. A ratchet system moved the log forward one precise increment each cycle.
“Every component was modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to combine these parts so they operated within a precisely synchronized order, sawing on every downward stroke while moving on every return motion. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent use of basic components.”
A fact that brings us to the current puzzle. The task is you to reimagine one of the fundamental concepts behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism that turns circular movement into vertical action. You have these components only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or housing into which one of the rods will fit snugly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so that the parts don’t fall down.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK with the answer.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please propose (less celebrated) candidates as the planet’s greatest creation.
