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

One can find numerous contenders for the designation as “world’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.

According to a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to a automated timber mill invented through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.

“Before automated cutting, constructing a simple merchant vessel required around ten lumberjacks laboring for 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same amount of cut lumber might be manufactured in less than seven days.”

Owing to their speedy mechanical saw, that turned timber to planks with virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to construct ships more quickly compared to any other nation, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial and artistic supremacy in the continent and the globe.

The Original Genuine Manufacturing Device

Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, was “mankind’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill rotated a gear. One component transformed the rotary motion to up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed the spinning motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber toward the cutter. A ratchet system moved the log ahead one precise increment per cycle.

“Each element seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts in order that they operated within a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing on every descending stroke and advancing with each return motion. It was a remarkably clever application of fundamental parts.”

Which leads us to the current puzzle. I’d like for you to reimagine a key the basic ideas behind Corneliszoon’s invention.

Circular to Vertical

Design a machine which converts circular motion to up-and-down action. You have these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or housing through which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Consider that you can mount components on a stand, so that the components do not collapse.)

The solution returns at 5pm UK with the solution.

Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (less celebrated) contenders as the planet’s greatest creation.