Are You Able to Solve This? That Forgotten Dutch Invention That Shaped our Contemporary Globe

There are numerous contenders for the title of “world’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.

According to a new book, though, that honor belongs to a mechanised sawmill invented by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.

“Before mechanised cutting, constructing a simple trading ship required around 10 sawyers laboring over 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of processed timber might be manufactured in less than a week.”

Thanks to their rapid automated saw, that converted timber into boards with almost no manual labor, the Dutch could build ships faster compared to anyone else, which sparked a century of Dutch maritime, financial as well as artistic dominance across the continent and the globe.

The First Genuine Manufacturing Machine

The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial true factory machine.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part converted its rotary movement into vertical action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s motion feeding the timber to the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the wood forward a measured step per cycle.

“Each element was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius was to combine these parts so the machine operated within a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting with each downward motion while moving with each upward motion. It was a remarkably intelligent use of basic parts.”

Which leads us to today’s challenge. The task is you to reinvent a key the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic invention.

Round and Up

Construct a machine that turns circular movement into vertical motion. You have these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the bars will fit perfectly. (Assume you can put things on a base, so that the parts don’t fall down.)

I’ll be back later today UK featuring the solution.

In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates as the planet’s greatest creation.