Wind-powered sawmill
Molino de aserrar de viento con cigüeñal
- Date
- 1594 · confidence high
- Place
- Uitgeest / Zaandam, Netherlands
- Credited to
- Cornelis Corneliszoon van Uitgeest (patent of 1593–1594)
- People
- 👤 Cornelis Corneliszoon1550–1607
- Field
- Matter & energy
What it is
A windmill that converted rotary motion into the back-and-forth motion of multiple saws via a crankshaft, sawing planks thirty times faster than by hand. Its concentration in the Zaan district created the first industrial region in Europe.
Medieval water-powered sawmills had existed; the novelty was wind power, in a country without fast-flowing rivers.
What it led to
- Cheap, mass Dutch shipbuilding (the fluyt) and commercial hegemony
- The Zaan industrial zone, with hundreds of mills (oil, paper, paint)
- Guild resistance from the sawyers of Amsterdam
- The general application of the crankshaft to industry
Built on
- Rotating-cap tower windmill
- Crankshaft and connecting rod
- Villard de Honnecourt's water-powered saw
Made possible
- Bucket dredger (mud mill)1589
- Fluyt and VOC shipyards
- Industrial paper and oil mills
- Steam sawmill