Are You Able to Solve It? The Forgotten Dutch Creation That Forged the Modern Globe
One can find numerous candidates for the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
According to a recent publication, though, that title belongs to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to mechanised sawing, building a modest trading ship required approximately ten lumberjacks laboring for 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same amount of processed timber might be produced within a week.”
Thanks to this speedy mechanical cutter, which converted timber to planks using virtually no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct vessels more quickly than anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Dutch maritime, financial as well as artistic dominance across the continent and the globe.
The Original Genuine Manufacturing Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. A single part transformed its circular motion to up-and-down motion for the saw. A separate mechanism changed that same spinning motion into a lateral movement feeding the timber toward the blade. A ratchet system moved the log forward a measured step each stroke.
“Every component was modest by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to integrate them so they operated within a precisely synchronized order, sawing with each descending stroke and moving on every upward motion. It was a remarkably clever application of fundamental components.”
A fact that leads us to the current challenge. I’d like you to reinvent a key the basic ideas underpinning this historic invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism which converts rotary movement into vertical action. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a tube or housing into which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Consider that it is possible to mount components on a stand, so that the parts do not collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK featuring the answer.
Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) contenders as the world’s greatest invention.
