Are You Able to Solve It? The Overlooked Dutch Creation That Forged the Modern World

There are numerous candidates for the designation as “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.

As per a recent publication, however, that title belongs to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.

“Before mechanised sawing, constructing a simple merchant vessel required approximately ten sawyers working over 90 days,” notes the author. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber might be manufactured in less than a week.”

Thanks to their rapid mechanical cutter, which turned timber into planks using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders could construct ships more quickly than anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Dutch maritime, economic as well as artistic dominance in Europe and the world.

The Original True Industrial Device

Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues the writer, represented “mankind’s first true factory apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. One component transformed its rotary motion into up-and-down action for the saw. A separate mechanism changed the rotary movement into a lateral motion advancing the timber to the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood forward one precise increment each cycle.

“Every component seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to combine these parts in order that the machine operated in a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting on every downward motion and moving on every upward motion. It was a remarkably intelligent use of basic parts.”

A fact that leads us up to the current puzzle. The task is for you to reimagine one of the fundamental ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.

Circular to Vertical

Construct a machine which converts circular motion into up-and-down motion. You have these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or sleeve through which one of the rods will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a stand, so that the parts don’t collapse.)

The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the answer.

In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (less celebrated) contenders for the world’s greatest creation.