Are You Able to Crack It? That Forgotten Dutch Creation Which Shaped the Modern Globe
One can find many contenders to claim the title of “planet’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The movable type. The combustion motor.
According to a new book, though, that title belongs to the mechanised timber mill conceived by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, constructing a simple trading ship required around 10 sawyers working over 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical quantity of processed timber might be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Owing to this rapid automated saw, that converted timber into boards with virtually no manual labor, the Dutch could build ships faster than anyone else, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, economic as well as artistic dominance across Europe and the world.
The Original Genuine Manufacturing Device
The inventor's lumber mill, argues Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial true factory apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. A single part transformed the circular movement to vertical motion to power the cutting blade. Another component changed that same spinning movement into a lateral movement advancing the log to the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the wood ahead a measured step each stroke.
“Every component seemed simple on its own. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to combine them so the machine operated within a perfectly controlled order, cutting on every descending motion and moving on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever use of basic components.”
A fact that leads us up to today’s puzzle. The task is for you to reimagine one of the basic ideas behind this historic invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism which converts rotary movement to vertical motion. Your available these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve through which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so that the parts don’t fall down.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK time featuring the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (less celebrated) contenders as the planet’s greatest creation.
