Can You Crack This? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation That Shaped our Modern Globe

There are many candidates to claim the title of “world’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.

As per a new book, though, that honor belongs to the mechanised sawmill conceived by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.

“Before automated sawing, building a modest merchant vessel required approximately 10 sawyers working over 90 days,” writes the author. “Using wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of processed timber could be produced within a week.”

Owing to this rapid automated saw, which converted logs to planks using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to build vessels faster compared to anyone else, which sparked a century of Dutch naval, economic and cultural dominance across Europe and the globe.

The Original True Manufacturing Device

Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues the writer, was “humanity’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. A single part transformed its circular motion into up-and-down motion for the saw. Another component transformed the rotary movement into a sideway’s motion advancing the timber toward the cutter. A ratchet system moved the wood forward one precise increment each stroke.

“Each element was simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts in order that the machine acted in a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting on every downward stroke and advancing on every upward motion. It was a remarkably intelligent application of basic parts.”

A fact that brings us up to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reinvent one of the fundamental concepts behind Corneliszoon’s invention.

Circular to Vertical

Construct a mechanism that turns rotary motion to up-and-down action. Your available these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or housing into which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Assume you can mount components on a stand, so that the components do not collapse.)

The solution returns later today UK featuring the answer.

In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please propose (less celebrated) contenders for the world’s greatest creation.