Can You Solve It? That Overlooked Netherlands Creation That Forged the Modern Globe

One can find many contenders to claim the title of “world’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.

As per a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to the automated sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.

“Before automated sawing, building a modest merchant vessel required approximately 10 lumberjacks laboring over 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same amount of cut lumber might be produced within seven days.”

Owing to their rapid automated saw, which converted logs into planks with almost no human effort, Dutch builders were able to build vessels faster than anyone else, an advantage that unleashed a century of Netherlands naval, economic and artistic dominance in the continent and the world.

The Original Genuine Manufacturing Device

Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. A single part converted its rotary movement to up-and-down action to power the saw. A separate mechanism changed that same spinning motion into a sideway’s movement advancing the timber to the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the log ahead one precise increment each stroke.

“Each element was simple on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts so the machine operated within a perfectly controlled order, sawing on every downward motion while advancing with each upward stroke. It was an astonishingly intelligent use of basic components.”

A fact that brings us to today’s challenge. I’d like you to reimagine one of the basic ideas behind this historic machine.

Circular to Vertical

Design a machine that turns rotary movement to vertical action. Your available these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or housing into which a single the bars will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so that the components don’t fall down.)

I’ll be back later today UK time featuring the solution.

Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please propose (non obvious) candidates as the world’s greatest creation.