Can You Solve It? The Forgotten Netherlands Invention That Forged the Contemporary World
One can find numerous candidates to claim the designation as “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
As per a recent publication, though, that honor should go to the mechanised timber mill invented by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.
“Before automated cutting, building a simple merchant vessel required around ten lumberjacks working over three months,” notes the author. “Using wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber could be manufactured within seven days.”
Thanks to their speedy mechanical cutter, which turned logs to boards with almost no human effort, the Dutch could construct vessels more quickly compared to anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Netherlands naval, economic as well as cultural supremacy in the continent and the world.
The Original Genuine Industrial Device
The inventor's lumber mill, argues the writer, was “mankind’s first true factory machine.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. One component converted its circular motion to up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. Another component transformed the spinning motion into a lateral motion feeding the log to the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood forward a measured step per cycle.
“Every component was simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to integrate these parts so the machine acted in a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing on every descending stroke while advancing on every upward stroke. This constituted a remarkably clever application of fundamental parts.”
Which leads us up to today’s puzzle. The task is you to reimagine a key the basic concepts underpinning this historic invention.
Circular to Vertical
Design a machine which converts rotary motion to vertical motion. Your available these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or housing into which a single the bars will fit perfectly. (Assume you can put things on a base, so the components don’t fall down.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s most impactful invention.
