When a Windmill Met a Crankshaft – & Changed History

Last month I wrote about the expected changes in the Dutch Patent Act – the second fundamental change since the modern patent system was introduced in the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1912.

However, long before the Kingdom of the Netherlands was established, patents had already been granted for technological inventions in region. Inventions that – according to some – changed not only the fate of that little patch of land on the shores of the North Sea, but history as a whole.

Whilst this article does not strictly qualify as news, it illustrates an eye-opening lesson for many inventors who are new to the world of patents.

The story goes that during the revolt of the Dutch against Habsburg rule in the 16th century, the Habsburg armies burned down the village of Uitgeest. Dozens of houses had to be rebuilt, and rebuilding required timber – a lot of it. At the time, sawing a tree trunk into usable planks was still a manual process. It was slow and laborious, allegedly taking about 30 days. Among the inhabitants of that village was Cornelis Corneliszoon van Uitgeest.

Whether the destruction of his hometown truly inspired him we may never know. What we do know is that in 1593 Cornelis obtained an octrooi (patent) from the government of Holland and West-Friesland – one of the founding provinces of the Dutch Republic, a predecessor confederation of the present Kingdom – for a remarkable invention: a wind-powered sawmill using a crank mechanism.

And here lies the eye-opener – one that still applies today.

Cornelis did not invent the windmill. And he did not invent the crank. Both technologies had existed for centuries.

What he did was combine them.

By connecting the rotating motion of a windmill to a crank mechanism that converted it into the back-and-forth motion of a saw frame, he created the first efficient mechanical sawmill. This seemingly simple combination changed everything.

Suddenly timber could be processed many times faster than by manual sawing. The Zaan region became the world’s first large-scale industrial zone, long before the invention of the steam engine. And the Dutch Republic gained the ability to build ships at unprecedented speed – a key ingredient of the maritime power that would define the Dutch ‘Golden Age’.

A reminder that innovation is not always about inventing entirely new components. Often the real invention lies in recognising how existing technologies can work together in a way no one had previously imagined. That was true in 1593. And it is still true in 2026 – when many patentable inventions are built from combinations of technologies that already exist.