Can You Solve This? That Overlooked Dutch Creation That Shaped the Modern Globe

There are numerous candidates to claim the designation as “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.

As per a recent publication, though, that honor should go to a mechanised timber mill conceived by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.

“Before automated sawing, building a modest merchant vessel required around 10 lumberjacks working over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber might be produced within seven days.”

Thanks to their speedy automated saw, which turned timber to planks using almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct vessels more quickly compared to any other nation, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial and artistic dominance in the continent and the globe.

The Original True Industrial Device

Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s first true industrial machine.” A windmill turned a wheel. One component transformed the circular motion into up-and-down motion to power the saw. Another component transformed that same rotary movement into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the wood ahead one precise increment each cycle.

“Each element was simple on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to combine them so they operated within a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing with each downward motion and moving on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental parts.”

Which brings us to today’s challenge. The task is you to reimagine one of the basic concepts behind Corneliszoon’s machine.

Round and Up

Design a mechanism that turns rotary motion to up-and-down action. Your available these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the rods can slide perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so that the parts don’t fall down.)

I’ll be back at 5pm UK with the answer.

Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to suggest (non obvious) contenders as the world’s greatest creation.