🔗 Share this article Can You Crack It? That Forgotten Netherlands Creation That Shaped our Modern World There are numerous candidates for the title of “planet’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor. As per a new book, however, that title belongs to the mechanised sawmill invented through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593. “Before automated sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel required around 10 lumberjacks laboring over three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber might be produced within a week.” Thanks to their speedy mechanical saw, which turned timber to planks with virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to construct ships faster than anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Netherlands naval, economic as well as artistic supremacy across the continent and the globe. The Original Genuine Manufacturing Device The inventor's sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “mankind’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part converted its rotary motion into up-and-down action for the saw. A separate mechanism changed the spinning motion into a lateral movement advancing the log toward the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood ahead a measured step each cycle. “Every component seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius was to integrate these parts so the machine operated in a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing with each downward stroke and advancing on every upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental parts.” A fact that leads us to the current puzzle. The task is for you to reimagine a key the fundamental ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention. Round and Up Construct a machine that turns circular motion into vertical motion. You have these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or housing into which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Assume you can mount components on a stand, so that the parts don’t fall down.) I’ll be back later today UK with the answer. In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates as the planet’s most impactful creation.