Wilem van Swanenburg after Jacques de Ghein II: Simon Stevin’s sail wagon (1603-1649)

This engraving from 1602 shows us the land yacht used in by prince Maurits of Orange to impress and entertain his friends. They’d sail on the beaches of the North Sea shore near The Hague with a, for this period, dazzling speed of 50 kilometers (31 miles) per hour. The guests on this particular trip were reportedly 26 diplomats.
This very early eco-friendly limousine was invented by the famous mathematician Simon Stevin. Maurits and Stevin met in Leiden, where they both attended university. Stevin was a fascinating scholar who had an enormous impact on the development of military fortifications with bastions, the introduction of the metric system and the practice of inventing and using Dutch words in science, instead of the then common Latin terms. Ironically, some of his academic publications were in turn translated into Latin.
When Maurits’ father William of Orange was murdered and Maurits became stadtholder, he appointed Stevin as his advisor on military issues. Maurits became one of the leading generals of his time.