Can You Solve It? The Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Forged the Modern World
One can find many candidates to claim the designation as “planet’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.
As per a new book, however, that honor should go to the mechanised sawmill conceived through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, constructing a simple merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten sawyers working over 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same amount of cut lumber might be produced within seven days.”
Thanks to this speedy automated cutter, that converted timber to planks using almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct ships faster than anyone else, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Dutch maritime, financial as well as cultural supremacy in the continent and the world.
The Original True Manufacturing Device
The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s first true factory apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. One component converted the circular movement to up-and-down motion to power the saw. Another component transformed the rotary motion into a sideway’s movement advancing the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward one precise increment each cycle.
“Each element seemed simple on its own. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to integrate them in order that the machine acted in a perfectly controlled order, sawing on every downward motion while moving with each return stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of basic parts.”
A fact that leads us to today’s puzzle. The task is you to reinvent one of the basic ideas behind this historic invention.
Round and Up
Design a mechanism that turns rotary movement into vertical motion. You have these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing into which one of the rods can slide perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so the components don’t fall down.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to propose (less celebrated) candidates as the planet’s greatest invention.
