🔗 Share this article Are You Able to Crack This? That Forgotten Netherlands Creation That Shaped our Contemporary Globe There are many contenders for the title of “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine. According to a recent publication, however, that title belongs to the automated sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593. “Before automated sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel required approximately 10 lumberjacks working over 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same amount of cut lumber could be produced in less than seven days.” Owing to this speedy mechanical saw, which turned logs to boards with almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to construct ships more quickly compared to any other nation, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial as well as cultural supremacy in Europe and the world. The First Genuine Manufacturing Device The inventor's sawmill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s first true industrial machine.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part converted its circular motion to up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed the spinning movement into a lateral motion advancing the log to the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood forward a measured step per stroke. “Each element seemed simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine these parts so they operated in a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing with each descending stroke while moving with each upward motion. It was an astonishingly intelligent use of basic parts.” Which leads us to today’s challenge. I’d like you to reimagine one of the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic machine. Circular to Vertical Construct a machine that turns circular motion into vertical motion. Your available these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve into which a single the bars will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so that the components don’t collapse.) I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the solution. Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to suggest (non obvious) candidates for the world’s greatest creation.