Can You Crack It? The Overlooked Dutch Creation That Forged the Contemporary Globe

There are many candidates for the designation as “world’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.

According to a new book, though, that honor should go to the automated timber mill conceived by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.

“Before automated sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel required approximately 10 lumberjacks working for three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be produced in less than seven days.”

Thanks to this rapid mechanical cutter, that converted timber to planks with almost no human effort, Dutch builders could build vessels faster compared to any other nation, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial and cultural dominance in the continent and the globe.

The First Genuine Industrial Device

Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends the writer, represented “mankind’s first authentic factory machine.” A windmill rotated a wheel. One component transformed its circular movement into up-and-down motion for the saw. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism moved the log forward one precise increment per cycle.

“Every component was simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius was to combine them so the machine operated within a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting with each descending stroke and moving on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever use of basic parts.”

Which brings us to the current puzzle. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the basic ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.

Round and Up

Construct a mechanism which converts circular movement to up-and-down motion. Your available these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or sleeve through which a single the bars can slide perfectly. (Consider that you can mount components on a stand, so the parts do not fall down.)

The solution returns later today UK with the solution.

Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please propose (less celebrated) contenders for the planet’s greatest invention.