Can You Crack This? That Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Forged our Modern World
One can find numerous candidates to claim the title of “planet’s most significant invention.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, though, that honor should go to the automated sawmill invented by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Prior to automated sawing, building a modest trading ship necessitated approximately 10 lumberjacks laboring for 90 days,” writes the author. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, an identical quantity of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Thanks to this speedy automated cutter, that turned timber into boards with almost no human effort, the Dutch could construct vessels more quickly than anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Dutch naval, economic as well as artistic supremacy across the continent and the world.
The First True Industrial Device
The inventor's sawmill, argues Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial true industrial machine.” A windmill rotated a wheel. A single part transformed the rotary movement to vertical motion for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same spinning motion into a lateral motion advancing the log to the blade. A geared mechanism moved the log ahead a measured step each cycle.
“Each element was simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to integrate them in order that the machine operated in a perfectly controlled order, sawing on every descending motion and moving with each upward stroke. It was an astonishingly intelligent use of basic parts.”
A fact that leads us up to today’s puzzle. I’d like for you to reinvent a key the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic machine.
Circular to Vertical
Design a mechanism which converts circular motion to vertical action. Your available these components only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing into which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a stand, so the parts do not fall down.)
The solution returns later today UK featuring the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s greatest creation.
