Can You Solve It? That Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Shaped the Contemporary Globe
There are many candidates to claim the title of “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
As per a new book, however, that honor should go to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Prior to mechanised cutting, building a simple merchant vessel required approximately ten sawyers working over 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same amount of processed timber might be manufactured within a week.”
Owing to their rapid mechanical saw, which turned timber into planks using virtually no manual labor, the Dutch could construct ships faster than anyone else, which sparked a century of Netherlands maritime, financial and cultural dominance across Europe and the world.
The Original True Manufacturing Device
The inventor's sawmill, contends the writer, was “mankind’s initial authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part converted its circular movement to up-and-down action for the saw. A separate mechanism transformed the spinning motion into a lateral motion feeding the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the log ahead a measured step per stroke.
“Every component was modest by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to integrate these parts so the machine acted within a perfectly controlled order, cutting with each downward stroke while moving with each upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent use of basic components.”
Which leads us up to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reinvent a key the fundamental concepts underpinning this historic invention.
Round and Up
Design a machine that turns rotary movement into vertical action. Your available these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or housing into which a single the rods can slide snugly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a stand, so the components don’t fall down.)
The solution returns later today UK time with the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (less celebrated) contenders as the planet’s most impactful invention.