Are You Able to Solve This? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation Which Shaped the Contemporary World

One can find numerous candidates to claim the designation as “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.

As per a new book, however, that title belongs to a automated timber mill invented through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.

“Prior to mechanised sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel required around ten lumberjacks laboring for 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, the same amount of cut lumber might be produced within a week.”

Thanks to their rapid mechanical saw, which turned timber to boards with virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to build ships faster compared to any other nation, an advantage that unleashed a century of Dutch naval, economic as well as artistic supremacy across the continent and the globe.

The First True Manufacturing Device

The inventor's sawmill, argues the writer, was “humanity’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. A single part transformed the circular movement into up-and-down action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed the rotary motion into a lateral movement advancing the log toward the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood ahead one precise increment per cycle.

“Each element seemed simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts so the machine acted within a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing on every downward motion while advancing with each return stroke. It was a remarkably clever use of fundamental parts.”

A fact that brings us up to the current puzzle. The task is for you to reinvent one of the basic ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.

Round and Up

Design a machine which converts circular movement to vertical action. Your available these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a tube or housing into which a single the rods can slide perfectly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a base, so that the components do not collapse.)

The solution returns later today UK time featuring the solution.

In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) candidates as the world’s greatest invention.