Are You Able to Crack It? That Forgotten Dutch Creation Which Shaped the Modern Globe
There are many contenders for the title of “world’s greatest innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, though, that title belongs to a automated timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated around 10 sawyers laboring for three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical quantity of processed timber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Owing to this speedy automated cutter, that converted timber into planks with virtually no manual labor, the Dutch were able to build vessels more quickly compared to any other nation, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial as well as artistic supremacy in Europe and the world.
The First Genuine Manufacturing Device
The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part transformed the rotary movement to up-and-down action for the saw. Another component changed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber toward the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the wood ahead one precise increment per stroke.
“Every component was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to combine them in order that they acted in a perfectly controlled order, cutting on every downward motion and advancing with each upward motion. It was a remarkably intelligent application of fundamental parts.”
A fact that brings us to the current puzzle. The task is for you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a machine that turns circular motion to up-and-down action. Your available these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or housing through which one of the rods will fit perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so the parts do not collapse.)
I’ll be back later today UK time featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) candidates for the world’s greatest creation.
