Can You Crack This? The Overlooked Dutch Invention That Forged the Modern Globe
One can find numerous contenders for the designation as “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.
According to a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to the automated timber mill conceived by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before automated cutting, constructing a modest trading ship necessitated around ten lumberjacks working over 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, an identical amount of cut lumber could be manufactured within seven days.”
Thanks to this rapid mechanical cutter, which turned logs to planks with almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct ships more quickly than anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial and artistic supremacy in Europe and the world.
The First Genuine Industrial Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, argues Dávila, represented “mankind’s initial true factory machine.” A windmill turned a gear. A single part transformed the rotary movement into up-and-down motion for the cutting blade. Another component transformed the rotary motion into a sideway’s movement advancing the timber toward the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the wood ahead one precise increment each cycle.
“Every component seemed modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius was to combine these parts in order that they operated within a precisely synchronized order, cutting with each downward motion while moving with each upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of fundamental components.”
Which leads us to the current puzzle. The task is you to reinvent one of the basic ideas behind this historic invention.
Round and Up
Construct a machine which converts circular motion into up-and-down action. You have these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve into which a single the rods can slide perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a stand, so the parts do not fall down.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK with the solution.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (less celebrated) candidates as the world’s greatest creation.
