Are You Able to Crack This? That Forgotten Dutch Creation Which Forged the Modern Globe
One can find many candidates for the title of “planet’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
As per a new book, though, that title should go to the mechanised timber mill invented through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before automated sawing, constructing a simple merchant vessel required approximately ten lumberjacks laboring for 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Thanks to their rapid automated saw, that converted timber to planks with virtually no human effort, the Dutch were able to construct vessels faster than anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial and artistic dominance in the continent and the globe.
The First Genuine Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “mankind’s initial authentic factory machine.” A windmill turned a gear. One component transformed the rotary motion into up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed the rotary movement into a lateral motion feeding the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood ahead one precise increment per stroke.
“Each element seemed modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to integrate them so the machine operated within a perfectly controlled order, cutting with each descending stroke and moving on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever application of basic parts.”
Which brings us to the current challenge. I’d like for you to reimagine a key the fundamental ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Circular to Vertical
Construct a mechanism which converts circular movement into vertical action. You have these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a tube or housing into which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so that the components do not fall down.)
The solution returns later today UK with the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please propose (less celebrated) candidates for the planet’s greatest creation.
