Can You Crack It? The Overlooked Netherlands Creation That Shaped the Contemporary Globe
One can find many candidates for the designation as “planet’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a new book, though, that title should go to a automated timber mill conceived by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before automated sawing, building a modest merchant vessel necessitated approximately 10 sawyers laboring for 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same amount of cut lumber might be manufactured within seven days.”
Owing to their rapid mechanical saw, which converted timber into planks with virtually no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct vessels more quickly than anyone else, which unleashed a century of Dutch maritime, economic as well as artistic dominance across the continent and the globe.
The Original Genuine Industrial Device
Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s initial true industrial machine.” A wind turbine turned a gear. One component converted its rotary motion into up-and-down action for the saw. A separate mechanism changed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s movement advancing the timber to the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood ahead a measured step per cycle.
“Each element was modest on its own. The Dutchman’s genius was to combine these parts in order that they acted within a perfectly controlled order, cutting with each downward motion and advancing with each upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever application of fundamental parts.”
A fact that leads us up to today’s challenge. The task is you to reimagine one of the fundamental concepts behind Corneliszoon’s invention.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a mechanism which converts circular movement into vertical motion. Your available these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or housing into which a single the rods will fit perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so the parts do not collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK time with the answer.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to propose (less celebrated) candidates as the planet’s greatest creation.
