Can You Solve This? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation Which Forged the Modern Globe

There are numerous contenders for the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.

As per a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.

“Before automated cutting, building a modest merchant vessel required approximately ten sawyers laboring for three months,” notes the author. “Using wind-driven sawmills, the same amount of processed timber could be produced within seven days.”

Thanks to this rapid automated saw, that converted logs to boards with virtually no human effort, the Dutch could build vessels more quickly than any other nation, an advantage that unleashed a century of Dutch maritime, economic and artistic dominance across the continent and the globe.

The First Genuine Manufacturing Device

Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s first authentic factory machine.” A windmill rotated a gear. One component converted the rotary motion to vertical motion for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed that same spinning motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber toward the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward one precise increment each cycle.

“Every component was simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to combine these parts so the machine acted within a precisely synchronized order, sawing with each downward motion and advancing with each upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever application of fundamental components.”

Which brings us up to today’s challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the basic ideas behind this historic machine.

Circular to Vertical

Construct a mechanism that turns circular motion into vertical motion. Your available these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or housing into which one of the bars will fit perfectly. (Assume it is possible to mount components on a stand, so the components do not collapse.)

I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the solution.

In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to propose (less celebrated) candidates for the world’s most impactful creation.