Cornelis Corneliszoon van Uitgeest

Cornelis Corneliszoon (* 1550 in Uitgeest, Netherlands, † 1600) was the inventor of the sawmill.

Its windmill used a crankshaft to convert the rotational movement in a forward and backward movement of the saw. This allowed him the wood more accurately and 30 times faster to cut than by hand. In 1594 he built his first small sawmill, which he sold the following year to Alkmaar. 2004 they had been rediscovered by chance. On his crankshaft in 1597 he received a patent. He then built a more advanced windmill, which played a key role in the Golden Age, and made ​​possible the mass production of ships for overseas trade. The mill turned the Zaan district - north of Amsterdam - in the first industrial area.

He still held more patents, such as an early version of the centrifugal pump.