Cornelis Corneliszoon van Uitgeest

Cornelis Corneliszoon van Uitgeest (about 1550 to about 1600), also called Krelis Lootjes, was a Dutch windmill owner from the village of Uitgeest who invented the wind-powered sawmill. Its crankshaft converted the circular motion of the windmill into the back-and-forth motion of a saw and made the conversion of log timber into planks about thirty times faster than before. He built his first sawmill in 1594, a small mill floating on a raft, and was granted a patent on the crankshaft in December 1593 and a further patent for improvements in 1597. His mill Het Juffertje developed into the paltrokmolen, which supported Dutch shipbuilding and helped turn the Zaan district into an early industrial area.