Can You Solve It? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation Which Shaped our Contemporary Globe
There are many candidates for the designation as “world’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a recent publication, though, that title should go to a mechanised timber mill invented by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten sawyers working over three months,” writes the author. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical quantity of processed timber could be manufactured within seven days.”
Thanks to this rapid mechanical cutter, that converted timber into planks with almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct vessels faster than any other nation, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial as well as artistic dominance in Europe and the world.
The Original True Industrial Machine
The inventor's sawmill, contends the writer, represented “mankind’s first true industrial machine.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part converted its rotary motion to vertical action to power the cutting blade. Another component changed that same spinning movement into a lateral movement feeding the log to the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood ahead a measured step each cycle.
“Each element seemed modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to integrate them in order that they acted in a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing with each downward motion and moving on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever application of basic parts.”
Which brings us up to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reimagine a key the fundamental concepts underpinning this historic machine.
Round and Up
Construct a machine which converts circular movement into vertical action. Your available these components only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve through which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume you can put things on a base, so the parts do not fall down.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time with the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) contenders as the world’s greatest creation.
