Are You Able to Crack It? The Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Shaped the Modern World

There are many contenders for the title of “world’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.

According to a recent publication, though, that honor should go to a automated timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.

“Before automated cutting, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated around ten lumberjacks laboring for three months,” writes the author. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber might be produced within seven days.”

Thanks to their speedy automated saw, which turned logs to planks with virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders could build ships faster than anyone else, which unleashed a century of Netherlands maritime, financial and cultural supremacy in the continent and the world.

The First True Industrial Machine

Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s first true factory machine.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part converted its circular movement to vertical motion for the saw. A separate mechanism changed the rotary movement into a lateral motion feeding the timber toward the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the log forward a measured step each stroke.

“Every component seemed modest by itself. The Dutchman’s genius was to integrate these parts in order that the machine operated in a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every descending motion while advancing on every return stroke. It was an astonishingly intelligent use of fundamental components.”

Which brings us to today’s puzzle. I’d like you to reimagine a key the basic ideas underpinning this historic machine.

Circular to Vertical

Design a mechanism which converts rotary motion into up-and-down action. Your available these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve into which one of the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so the components don’t collapse.)

The solution returns later today UK time featuring the answer.

In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates for the planet’s greatest invention.