Are You Able to Crack This? That Overlooked Netherlands Invention That Shaped our Contemporary Globe

There are many candidates for the designation as “world’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The printing press. The steam engine.

As per a new book, however, that title belongs to a mechanised sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.

“Before mechanised cutting, building a modest merchant vessel necessitated around ten sawyers working over three months,” writes the author. “Using wind-driven sawmills, the same quantity of processed timber could be produced in less than seven days.”

Owing to this speedy automated cutter, which converted logs into boards using virtually no human effort, Dutch builders were able to build ships faster compared to anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, economic and artistic dominance across the continent and the globe.

The First Genuine Manufacturing Machine

The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s first true industrial machine.” A wind turbine turned a gear. A single part converted the rotary motion to up-and-down motion for the saw. A separate mechanism transformed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the timber to the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the log ahead one precise increment per cycle.

“Each element was modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to integrate them so the machine acted within a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing with each descending motion while moving on every upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of basic parts.”

A fact that leads us to today’s puzzle. I’d like you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.

Circular to Vertical

Design a machine which converts rotary movement into up-and-down motion. Your available these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or sleeve through which a single the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that you can put things on a stand, so that the components don’t fall down.)

The solution returns later today UK time featuring the answer.

In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) contenders as the planet’s greatest invention.